West of the Divide

West of the Divide finds the Duke as a man searching for his younger brother and at the same time the people who kidnapped him and murdered their father.

The film opens with a piece of good luck coming their way in the person of the dying gunman Gatt Ganns who's been hired by Lloyd Whitlock to kill rancher Lafe McKee. Of course Whitlock is once again a villain in the Snidely Whiplash tradition who not only wants the ranch, but also has evil designs on McKee's daughter Virginia Brown Faire.

In reviewing B westerns, sometimes I have a tendency to reach back to those 19th century morality plays so popular in that era. Whitlock in fact even laughs like a villain in one of those plays. For reference you should see the Irene Dunne-Allan Jones version of Showboat to see just the kind of drama they used to put on then. It survived in the B western, John Wayne's as well as other's.

Wayne of course by the end solves all the problems concerned and the villain gets his just desserts. We can't say how though.

The Duke pretends to be the recently deceased Mr. Ganns to get the goods on the bad guys along with sidekick Gabby Hayes. He discovers a young kid being raised by one of the outlaws. Interesting in this B western set firmly in the 19th century morality play tradition, we also have a topic so very gingerly touched on as child abuse. A rather adult theme for a western or any kind of picture at that time.

Wayne was just beginning his stay at Monogram Pictures Lone Star westerns, this was his third. Monogram had a stock company to rival the much better one of John Ford. Note how for the next three or four years, the casts are just about the same in every Wayne western at that studio. It gets hard to keep these in chronological order, I wouldn't be surprised if a few of these weren't shot simultaneously.

The best you can say about the Monogram films is that they kept John Wayne employed, not something easily said during the Depression. And they beat those serials he did for Mascot. West of the Divide will never be on any John Wayne fans top 10 list.

I bought this film because a book I read stated that it was the first

film that was important in the development of the "Gabby" (George)

Hayes character who was so enjoyable in the Hopalong Cassidy &

Roy Rogers (& others) films of the 1930s & 1940s. Hayes here

plays a character named "Dusty." He has a scruffy, grizzled look,

but doesn't yet have the beard that came later. Hayes has the

same voice & intonation as he used later, but engages in none of

the comedic antics that where such a big part of his "Gabby"

character. Is it a coincidence that John Wayne rides a white horse,

wears a big 10 gallon black hat & black shirt, & has the same

sidekick as Hopalong Cassidy did, all two years before Hoppy got

started in the movies? The Hopalong Cassidy movie character

seems to bear more resemblance to John Wayne in this movie

than he does to the Hoppy character as portrayed in the Clarence

Mulford books! Blooper: John Wayne's kid brother calls him "Dad"

in one scene! This is an enjoyable film, especially if you like Gabby

Hayes. What ruined it for me was a new soundtrack (basically,

swirling organ music) that was unnecessary & detracted from the

movie. I have the SONY release, copyrighted 1985 by Fox/Lorber,

so beware of that version if you like your old movies to be

unadulterated, as I do.

John Wayne stars as Ted Hayden in this one, lithe young companion of grizzled old George 'Gabby' Hayes, who was just starting to develop into the character now so familiar to Hopalong Cassidy fans. Ted is an orphan, left for dead by the varmints who done fer his paw, and saved from beneath his father's dead body by Hayes' Dusty Rhodes. All this – and much more – is related to the viewer in the opening scene, a conversation between the pair that is nothing but a huge chunk of exposition that is as lacking in subtlety as it is replete with information. Hayden has returned to his hometown to catch the man with the mad laugh who killed his father, and poses as Gat Ganns, all-round bad egg, who bears more than a passing physical resemblance to our hero.

This is a fairly acceptable entry in John Wayne's Lone Star series of films made in the early to mid-thirties. There is quite a diverting storyline, even though the acting is as creaky as usual for these flicks. It's the stunts that stand out in all of the low budget efforts Wayne made in those days, and their success is thanks to stuntman extraordinaire Yakima Canutt. You get the impression as you watch that some real hair-raising risks were taken to capture these scenes – and you sometimes wonder whether it was worth it considering the poor quality of most other aspects of the films. Watch out for Canutt standing in for bad guy Lloyd Whitlock, who sports a full head of greying hair, in the fight with Wayne near the end of the film. Canutt had dark hair and a noticeable bald patch, but hack director R. N. Bradbury obviously didn't believe in going to the expense of making even a perfunctory effort to disguise the actors' physical differences. Oddly enough, it's this kind of lack of attention to detail that make the Lone Star films so curiously endearing.

Frequently used story gets a good presentation here in "West of the Divide," and the excellent cast helps ensure high quality.

Young John Wayne and grizzled George Hayes start with what I learned in college theater-history classes was called a "feather-duster" scene, where characters -- such as a maid, with a feather-duster -- tell the background of the story, today called "the back story."

It's kinda corny, but isn't too damaging.

Probably even in 1934 what was about to happen was predictable, but, before that predictable ending, enough happens in between it should hold the viewer's interest. It held mine.

When the hero meets the leading lady, there is no poor-writing instant romance. In fact, there is no real contact. It's an unusual boy-meets-girl.

That girl is Virginia Faire Brown, who is shown with 74 credits, although she never rose to be a major player and certainly not a star. But she is very attractive, even elegant, with an unusual dark-haired beauty.

Her character's father is played by the veteran Lafe McKee. The sheriff is by that veteran, and very talented actor, who didn't, alas, often enough get to show just how good an actor he was, Earl Dwire.

Chief bad guy is played by "Loyd Whitlock," who is usually known as Lloyd Whitlock, a very busy man with more than 200 credits!

OK, good story, great cast ably performing, lots of riding scenes, and a no-music-track realism that should keep you pinned to your seat. And if you want to see it, there's a good print at YouTube.

Along with the usual cast of characters , that the Duke usually performs with this movie attracted my attention more so than some of his other "b" westerns save for a few,, maybe because in the beginning of this one he plays or rather I should say pretends to be a killer to get deep inside of a gang to find out who killed his dad and kidnapped his brother,, he is very good at this and has the criminals totally convinced well except for one,, and eventually they find out he is not who he says that he really is... Yakima Cannut , and George "Gabby" Hayes also star with John Wayne,, rather enjoyable western LoneStar. I would definitely recommend this to anyone being a fan of the early John Wayne movies before he became a star.