West to Glory

Eddie Dean was one of the last singing cowboys. The trend was toward action-packed oaters without singing. Tim Holt, Rocky Lane, The Durango Kid were taking the lead, more in the line of Hopalong Cassidy than Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Then the entire genre was wiped out by the new invention called television. Eddie Dean was not much of an actor, not much on looks, but he could sing and was one of the best songwriters in country music at the time. His classic "One Has My Name, The Other Has My Heart" is still sung today. Even Jerry Lee Lewis had a hit with it.

"West to Glory" is a typical Eddie Dean western from the period. His sidekick was Soapy Jones (Roscoe Ates) who looked funny, talked funny, but definitely was not funny. Today when writers run out of humor in a movie they start throwing in flatulent jokes. In Dean's day writers couldn't do this because of the censors so they threw in food jokes. Soapy was always hungry, looking for food. His wisecracks were flat and sometimes even rude. Soapy does have one clever scene in "West to Glory." He is hit on the head and dreams where the stolen gold is hidden. In the dream he appears as Eddie Dean and Eddie appears as Soapy. It's a real hoot. Fact is Eddie plays Soapy better than Soapy plays Eddie. Eddie is hilarious with his dopey expression and mannerisms. There is a wild, crazy shootout with Soapy as Dean coming out the hero, the only time in a B western where the comical sidekick takes over and licks the bad guys single handed.

The story is similar to those of other PRC cheapies, Eddie is an undercover lawman in pursuit of stolen gold. One twist this go around is the emphasis on a priceless diamond. The gold is stolen as a ploy to get the diamond. Another twist is Maria (Dolores Castle) who plays a cat and mouse game with Dean, both in the romance department and in the search for the gold. She is lovely to look at and has a bigger role than many of the ladies in the oaters of the day. Apparently this was her first movie and she was unable to rise above bit parts in films during her short movie career. Also different is having two outlaw bosses rather than the usual one. A businessman and his henchman from the east team up with a saloon owner and his henchmen from the west. This leads to bickering and a power play between the two.

Eddie Dean wrote two of the three songs in the film, including the title song, which is a plus for the movie. The shootout in the showdown between Dean and the outlaws is a good one with plenty of action. As the old banjo player Floyd Holland used to say before he performed, "If you don't expect much, you won't be disappointed."

Harry J. Vegar has a Spanish land grant. He also has a failing rancho, a bagful of gold nuggets (that transform into coins at the end), and an heirloom diamond. The gold and diamond get stolen, so it's up to sheriff Eddie Dean to fix the problem while singing three songs.

I don't expect much out of a PRC western, so it didn't hurt to watch this. Dean's singing is pretty good, even if sound engineer Glen Glenn doesn't bother to coordinate Eddie's mouth with the lyrics, and Dolores Castle looks beautiful, but is a terrible actress. Ray Taylor directs very efficiently from a script by Elmer Clifton. M. A. Andersen's camerawork seems to be up to spec (there's a specific tree on the Iverson ranch that pops up in every Dean oater) , but the copy I looked at was overexposed and mismatched.

Jewel robbery was a rather unusual plot for a western, but it serves as the underlying cause for all the action that takes place in West To Glory starring Eddie Dean.

Dean was doing B westerns for Producer's Releasing Corporation at this point of his career and his sidekick here is Roscoe Ates who kept his usual stuttering act to a minimum. When I was first looking at the film I thought it was Fuzzy Knight, so identified with the stutter was Roscoe Ates.

Anyway Dean and Ates are at a fiesta at a border town where they discover a gang has been systematically robbing host Harry Vejar. Female guest at the fiesta Dolores Castle who was last seen wearing a valuable jeweled necklace seems to be working an agenda all her own.

In the end with three songs by Eddie Dean thrown in, it all gets resolved. Dean had a pleasant singing voice that occasionally saw action in non-western films.

Given the lack of production values, West to Glory is not too bad a film at all.