Westward Ho

Once they were pigeonholed in low-budgeted Grade-B films, actors found it difficult to get into major studios' higher priced productions. Even the now famous John Wayne discovered that painful fact early in his career as year after year passed by and no major offers came from the 'Big Eight' Hollywood studios. Appearing in as many as nine movies a year, Wayne was as busy as any actor on the screen. Typical of the many Westerns he appeared in during that time was August 1935's "Westward Ho." What sets this film apart from his others was it was the first movie produced by Hollywood's newest studio, Republic Pictures.

Ever since his ill-fated lead role in Raoul Walsh's big-budgeted 1930 epic "The Big Trail," Wayne was relegated to either tiny parts in major feature films or starred in Poverty Row films. Small studios such as Monogram Pictures loved his reasonable salary, his large physique and his Western-style mannerisms. In the stretch between 1930 and 1939 Wayne played in over 80 so-called 'horse operas.' The frequency appearing before the camera refined his acting skills, making him more polished with his every movie. Wayne also became adept at riding horses and in his stunt work, especially in his fist fighting. He was tutored by stuntman Yakima Canutt, a pioneer in making knuckle confrontations more realistic before the camera--yet insuring the safety of the actors. Wayne developed a style unique in cinema at the time; he's not only shown throwing punches with his patented wide swings, but he used every known tactic to fight the bad guys. "Before I came along, it was standard practice that the hero must always fight clean," Wayne said. "The heavy was allowed to hit the hero in the head with a chair or throw a kerosene lamp at him or kick him in the stomach, but the hero could only knock the villain down politely and then wait until he rose. I changed all that. I threw chairs and lamps. I fought hard and I fought dirty. I fought to win." In "Westward Ho," a gang of outlaws come across a small wagon train with a herd of cattle. The cow wrestlers kill its members and steal the livestock. One youngster, Jim (Frank McGlynn, Jr. As an adult) is kidnapped while his brother John (Wayne as an adult), is left for dead-but survives. As he grows into adulthood, John vows vengeance on those killers, while unbeknownst to him his brother Jim becomes part of the gang. The movie has been cited by some as cinema's earliest revisionist Western where the actions of John crosses the line employing dirty tactics in the name of seeking revenge.

Hollywood's landscape was dotted with a number of struggling independent film companies scratching out a living producing low-budget movies. Film lab owner Herbert Yates, an original investor in 20th Century Pictures, had a number of small studios in debt to his company from processing their film. Yates came up with the idea of merging six of these indebted studios into one larger company. He encouraged the consolidation by threatening them to immediately pay their bills. Most agreed, and the new studio became Republic Pictures. Those that merged included Monogram Pictures, which produced Wayne's westerns and possessed a nationwide distribution system Yates could use. Mascot Pictures Corp. Was the most sophisticated studio of the bunch, owning Mack Sennett's former facilities in Studio City as well as having Gene Autry under contract. Majestic Pictures, Liberty Pictures and Chesterfield Pictures rounded out the remaining studios joining Republic.

Through the years, Republic Pictures competed with the big boys, not only locking in contracts with the likes of Wayne, Autry and Roy Rogers, but produced bigger budgeted movies such as 1949's "Sands of Iwo Jima," 1952's "The Quiet Man," and 1954's "Johnny Guitar."

It is not a special film, but it is amusing and, considering a so early Western, it is perhaps the best movie of this genre until the end of the 30's (if you do not include among Westerns Chaplin's Gold Rush and The Pilgrim and Harrol Lloyd's An Eastern Westerner). There are good Wersterns in the 40's (The ox-bow incident and The red river), but not in the 30's (personally, I do not like Stagecoach, and perhaps only The Plainsman is in the same level among the Westerns I have watched from the same decade). An entertaining Western with a coherent story and with no apology to murdering "those evil savages" was not something common in cinema those days. So, there is a great merit here.

Brother versus brother as the Duke leads a gang of white-horse-mounted vigilantes out to destroy every bad guy in the state. His parents murdered by a gang of cattle thieves, his brother taken and raised by the gang, John/the Duke sets out to locate the gang a decade after the event. Exciting action scenes which make up for stilted dialogue, especially from Mary MacLaren as John's Ma. As the row of good guys, black hats and black shirts on their white chargers, thunder across the screen, my thoughts hark back to the days of 17-inch black and white TV sets. In Australia this comes packaged on a cheap DVD with 'Flying Tigers' and 'Hell Town'. The DVD has excellent sound but generally below average picture quality!

Newborn Republic Pictures utilizes the solid directoral ability of Robert Bradbury, and the presence of John Wayne along with Yakima Canutt and his troupe of stuntriders to produce this strongly scripted film of 1860s vigilante efforts to rid the Far West of outlaw bands that were involved in widespread robbery and cattle rustling. Bradbury, whose skill with Westerns dates back to the early silent period, directs and edits with a solid awareness of suspense, building his typically short scenes with sparse and, at times, stilted dialogue and an eye for proper cast placement which makes excellent use of defined personalities such as Wayne, Frank McGlynn Jr., and Glenn Strange, and gives particular value to the hard-riding stunt performers, who are splendid throughout this well-made (and musical) adventure filmed in California's Owens Valley, at the base of the Sierra Nevada.

first, we got people singing a song like watching a play on a stage. then the funny things showed up one by one. by watching this 1935 film i was unable not to think about what the hongkong shaw brothers did to their Chinese kung-fu movies, always with stupid screenplays, weird attires, costumes, hairdos, make-up, terrible acting... pretentious and unrealistic dialog.....all of those horrible arrangements shown in shaw brothers kung fu movies were accidentally matched this pathetic western genre b movie. all the people in this pioneering westward movie wore nice, clean and ironed costumes, even in gunfights, good guys led by john wayne were riding on white horses, wearing white shirts, while the bad guys' horses were just a mixture of different colors. there were so many laughable and pretentious scenes and dialog in this horrible film.