Girl from Tobacco Row

Watching this film again after many years, I must say that it is a solid piece of work from writer-producer-director Ron Ormond. It is perfectly pitched at the Southern drive-in audience of the mid-60s and features lots of action, a crime-related plot, lots of religious homilies from Tex Ritter playing a preacher, lots of superb downhome music, and nice Tennessee atmosphere (shot at the Starday Records Movie Ranch!). This was one of Ritter's last films, and thankfully he is not just a guest star as he was in Forty Acre Feud, but the true star of the film along with Earl Snake Richards. Ritter could read the phone book and make it sound profound, so it's great to see him delivering sermons to his flock and life lessons to his family so convincingly in this film. Star Earl "Snake" Richards (who was also star of Ormond's WHITE LIGHTNIN ROAD, which is worth seeing too) is better known to rock'n'roll fans as Earl Sinks, the man who replaced Buddy Holly in the Crickets and who sang on the original version of "I Fought The Law." He also made a lot of records under different names in the 60s, but by the mid-60s had solidified a career as Earl Richards and made many country singles, well into the 70s. He has also been a successful songwriter and music publisher, with a career still going today. Interestingly, in this film, when Tex Ritter's older daughter, the "girl from tobacco row" of the title, puts the move of Snake's character, he goes instead for the younger (and more conservative) daughter Rita, played by Rita Faye (who also had a successful country music career before this as "Little" Rita Faye and who played on some of Patsy Cline's records), and if I'm not mistaken, Richards-Sinks and Rita Faye were married in real life. The soundtrack music is wonderful, real downhome country with fiddles, autoharps, and banjos, and the on-screen musical performances include such traditional performers as Martha Carson and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith. In addition, Johnny Russell both acts (as the sheriff and boyfriend of the older daughter mentioned above) and sings a song, AND plays fiddle, both on his own song and accompanying Richards. Russell, who passed away a few years ago, wrote "Act Naturally" and many other hit songs, as well as gaining country music immortality by recording the classic "Red Necks, White Sox, and Blue Ribbon Beer" in the early 70s, a song that will always be a symbol of that era. While GIRL FROM TOBACCO ROW is a low-budget film and will no doubt look amateurish to people who want slick, assembly-line Hollywood product, it may well be Ron Ormond's best-made film of the 1960s, and AS A FILM it's well above most of the other drive-in country-music films of the 1960s in that this is actually a solid drama on its own and the music is secondary. And it should be a must-see for Tex Ritter's fans. I highly recommend it to anyone who finds the above description appealing. Bravo to Ron Ormond for getting everything right with this one.

I grew up in Nashville and my parents knew most of the musicians during the late 1950s, 1960s and into the 1970s. One day in 1966 Earl Richards, his wife Rita Faye and their young daughter showed up at our home and said, "Jump in the car and let's go see a movie!" It was an Oldsmobile station wagon with plenty of room for all 7 of us. He mentioned that it was a drive-in movie and we were trying to figure out where we were headed. The interstate highway had been under construction for several years and when we left Nashville heading northwest, my Dad asked where the movie was showing. Earl replied that it was in Evansville, Indiana. INDIANA? We all laughed because this is the sort of thing musicians often do. This movie was showing at a drive-in theater on a double bill with "The Day the World Cracked" or something like that. It was too much fun and I will never forget driving that far just to see a movie because friends were in it!

"The Girl from Tobacco Row" is one of the strangest low-budget films I've ever seen. While it's far from a good film, it is strangely entertaining and a curio that might be of interest to music historians and sociologists.

The film begins with a bunch of prisoners escaping from a road gang (note to readers: in some parts of the US, mostly non-violent prisoners are used for road crews to cut weeds, dig ditches and the like). Before this occurs, however, one of the prisoners tells the other where he's hidden some stolen loot. Not surprisingly, this prisoner with the loot is killed in the escape. His friend, 'Snake' Richards (played, interestingly by 'Snake' Richards!) manages to escape and you assume he'll soon go looking for the money. And, incidentally, a gang leader (Tex Ritter*) assumes that someone will come looking for the money--and he and his gang will wait to catch him and take the money for themselves.

In between the escape and the big confrontation is a lot of film--and very little plot. Snake is taken in by a preacher and his family and they welcome him--and they go to a lot of church services. Not surprisingly, Snake is torn between choosing between good (hard work and honesty) and evil (running off with stolen funds). Which path will Snake take?

As I said, though, there was very little plot and dialog. Mostly, the film consisted of one song after another after another. It honestly looks as if the filmmaker Ron Ormond went into the Tennessee countryside and rounded up all the local non-professional acts that he could and then put them on film. Some of it made some sense---such as the gospel and country music singers. But, there were also some odd acts including one group that did a rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"** and another that did a harmonica version of the Rimsky-Korsokov song "Flight of the Bumblebee"! The acts weren't bad--just odd. And, it's very obvious that they were recorded in some studio and then pretended to perform on film.

So is it any good? Not particularly. But, considering almost everyone you see in the film are non-actors, it's not bad either.

*Tex Ritter is an odd addition to the film. While he's billed first, he's really just a supporting character. Top billing was done because he was a singing cowboy movie star from the 1940s.

**Non-Americans might not know this, but "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a song strongly associated with the North during the Civil War. So, hearing these Southern folk performing this song was very surprising--especially back in the 1960s when sentiments in the South were decidedly less pro-North than they are today.

All of the Ron Ormond films I've seen are amusing and entertaining, and this is the best of the ones I've seen. He is one of the great "primative" low, low budget filmmakers, and if you are open at all to such things, you gotta check him out.

It's sad that Tex's son John is gone now too, I always wanted to meet him and ask him what he thought of this movie. Love the Harmonica act, who I believe appear in another Ormond film. If you ever wonder what it was like to go to a backwoods drive-in in the sixties, I can't see any movie putting you their more that this one. I know Ron's son was selling the films on video some years back, I wonder if he ever gets them on DVD.