Riders of Destiny

I recently purchased this film on a special triple bill DVD from an overly cheap discount store, in fact it was so cheap that the three movie disc cost me just one single pound of my hard earned British currency.

This film was both fantastic and atrocious in one. An exciting plot, but with laughable performances from the entire cast.

We know that all great actors have to start somewhere and the lone star westerns of the early thirties were what John 'The Duke' Wayne cut his teeth on.

To look at his work in his final film The Shootist in 1976, you can see just how much he had learnt over his 40 years in the business and what a great actor he did eventually become, but to look at his performances in these early days, you can understand why he spent most of the 1930's in relative obscurity.

Although Wayne looks uncomfortable throughout most of these films and his acting is wooden to say the least, it can't all be blamed on him.

These movies were the product of their day and cannot be judged by todays standards. Intended only as supporting features, these long forgotten studios turned out these 'B' movies by the shed load. Badly formed scripts with badly shaped characters must have poured though these fledgling studios like water through a hoop and with a stock company of actors who's style was still formed in the pantomime silent era, they were bound to be a bit cheesy. In fact if in 1933 there were Oscars awarded for the greatest achievement in over acting then this would be the motion picture with greatest ever hoard.

Wayne's character is a notorious gunman with a name that must have put the fear of God into whoever crossed his path, Singing Sandy Saunders.

Laugh? I damn near wet my pants.

And if that wasn't enough to give me the biggest gut wrencher of the century, then George 'Gabby' Hayes certainly iced the cake.

After an appalling song that sounded like two cats fighting over a piece of fish in a metal barrel, the great Gabby uttered the line, "Mmmm. I could listen to that all night." The line itself is worthy of side stitching surgery, but the look of peace and serenity on his face was just too much for the old chuckle muscles which then went on to explode.

I can honestly say that a truly inspired and well written comedy has never made me laugh as much as this film did.

However the story is a good one, with the corrupt businessman holding the town's ranchers to ransom over his monopoly in the water market with a view of buying up all the farms etc.

It survives today as nothing more than a nostalgic glimpse into the past, not only at a bygone era in cinema making, but as a chance to see a real Hollywood legend finding his feet. This alone makes it worth every penny of the thirty-three pence I in effect paid for it.

Forget the lame opening of Singin' Sandy (Wayne) warbling a tune that sounds about as much like Wayne's singing voice as mine does. This is still a solid Lone Star programmer. There's not a lot of hard riding or fast shooting, but there is a strong story-line, along with that stellar cast of Lone Star regulars-- George Hayes (before Gabby), Yakima Canutt, Earl Dwire, and Forrest Taylor, excellent as the head bad guy.

I expect the plot really resonated with Dust Bowl audiences of the time. Bad guy Taylor wants to use water rights to buy up all the little farmers in the valley. The effects of water returning to the valley are quite well done for a programmer. Also the crowd scenes look like real farmers, while the 30 seconds of the plain-faced frontier woman appealing to the crowd should be studied by A-grade Westerns.

Wayne is quite engaging as the good guy, looking every inch the part. Also, look for Al (Fuzzy) St. John, sans whiskers, as one of the bad guys, no less. One complaint-- there are two really tumbling trip-wire scenes that send the poor horses head over hoofs. I hope they survived. That was one real problem with these 30's Westerns. Anyway, it's still an entertaining 60 minutes for fans of Wayne and Lone Star.

Had the good folks at Lone Star Productions only decided not to dub John Wayne's voice with some forgettable cowboy ballads this would have been a far better western than it turned out to be.

Of course Wayne in later years would cringe at the mention of these films. If you want a good idea of how he really sounded listen to him in McLintock singing a favorite ballad of his, The Moon Shines Tonight on Pretty Redwing. The Lone Star people might have even looked for a young band singer working day to day in clubs in New Jersey around this time named Frank Sinatra who over 30 years later actually had his voice come out of Wayne's mouth during a Dean Martin show.

If they could have cut out the singing gimmick, Riders of Destiny is not a bad film, in fact a cut above some of the westerns the Duke was doing at the time. Ranchers in the valley are being squeezed out by a greedy villain played by Forrest Taylor. He's built a dam and controls all the water and it's either sell to him outright or pay his exorbitant prices for water. Gabby Hayes and his daughter Cecelia Parker happen to have the only other water around because they dug a well. Taylor especially wants their land.

The citizens have written to the federal government in Washington for intervention and they get it in the form of John Wayne. I don't think I have to go any farther. The Duke finds a very clever solution for the water problem which you should see the film to find out.

But don't lose your lunch hearing that Nelson Eddy wannabe voice coming out of Mr. Wayne's mouth.

"Riders of Destiny" was the first of several westerns Wayne made for the Lone Star arm of Monogram Pictures between 1933 and 1935. In this entry, the producers try to make the Duke into a singing cowboy called "Singin' Sandy Saunders with hilarious results. Any Wayne fan knows that the Duke couldn't have carried a tune if his life had depended on it. His voice was apparently dubbed by Smith Ballew whose deep baritone sounds nothing like Wayne. Wayne looks awkward and uncomfortable in "performing" the musical numbers. Thank heavens the singing cowboy experiment soon ended.

As for the movie itself, it contains a standard "B" western plot of the fight over water rights between the villain (Forrest Taylor) and the local ranchers. Duke, of course plays the hero. He had not yet developed his on screen character and still looked like a poverty row cowboy.

Also cast in the film were George (pre-Gabby) Hayes as the heroine's father, Cecilia Parker as the heroine and Yakima Canutt as "one of the boys" who performs his "falling from the racing horses under the wagon" stunt while doubling Wayne. Both Canutt and Hayes would go on to appear with Wayne in most of the other entries in the series. Canutt, in particular would have a profound effect on Wayne's future development teaching him, among other things, how to move, fight and look comfortable on a horse.

As "B" westerns go this one isn't too bad, however, I have to give it a failing grade because of the "singing".

An evil land baron is holding up water to a group of ranchers in order to try and take their properties for pennies on the dollar. Along comes Singin' Sandy Saunders (John Wayne), who saves the day for Gabby Hayes and his daughter by going undercover as the villain's newest gunman.

The first of sixteen films Wayne made for Lone Star/ Monogram Pictures, this tries to cast him as a singing cowboy, only with an obviously lip-synced voice. The title card prominently features his character as "Singin' Sandy" leading one to believe that this was meant to be the first in a proposed series!

Yes it's ridiculous, but also a lot of fun to see Wayne singing songs and shooting guns, especially when he does a little ditty before shooting it out with gunman Earl Dwire.

Riders Of Destiny features a rare villainous role for for Al "Fuzzy" St. John, who clowns around as much with the bad guys as he did playing a heroic sidekick, riding alongside Buster Crabbe and Lash LaRue.