The Voice of Bugle Ann

Although I was only 9 years old at the time, this film somehow left a deep impression on me. Certainly not because it was the first I'd seen — I had been watching films for several years by then. No, it was the feeling generated in a kid's heart . . . anyone who loved dogs would have felt it, I'm sure. I don't even remember much else about it. Just the baying of that lonely, doomed animal, Bugle Ann, caught in a steel trap on a foggy night. I don't even recall the details around it. They found her the next morning (Lionel Barrymore in one of his more moving scenes) when it was too late. It was a rare film, in those days, that left me feeling worse when I left the movie house than when I went in.

(Of course, the impression might have been solidified for me when I discovered that the girl I eventually married had also been deeply saddened by this film — one of HER earliest film memories, and that was in the late 1940s when we talked about it.)

I do wish I could see a re-issue of it.

This was the first movie my grandparents saw together...and they're still reminiscing about it. I want to get them a copy and watch it with them. I can't seem to find it online in VHS (video tape) anywhere...only the book at Borders. The TCM channel played it in July 2002, so I wonder if anyone taped it then? I would pay $$ for a copy! Thanks, --GB_TechWriter

This movie was filmed in and around my home town of Mendon Missouri. A small farming community in north central Missouri. It was mostly filmed on the farm of Tom Bash who at the time had previously been Judge of the Eastern District of Kansas City and Sheriff of Jackson County(Kansas City) Missouri. Tom bash was famous for the different types of Hunts and parties he hosted there and many people came from all over to join in including, on a regular basis the future President Harry Truman I have heard my grandparents and other older folk from my community talk about when this movie happened there. Anyone living who may have been involved in this picture or may have anecdotal information or artifacts from the filming of this movie. I would be very much interested in hearing from you. Thanks

Whenever my father would hear the music of a distant, musical hound, he'd say jokingly, "It's the voice of Bugle Ann!" For more than fifty years I've waited to see this movie and learn why it was so memorable for him. Happily TCM televised it today. At first I was afraid it was going to be too slow and rustically sentimental for me, but I stayed with it because it brought back memories of my dad and some of our hunts with hounds in the Midwest. Eventually Barrymore's great courtroom speech about man's most loyal and innocent friend and the haunting voice of Bugle Ann herself brought quiet pleasure, and I shucked off my modern day cynicism long enough to enjoy the wonderfully sentimental ending.

I have been watching for some reappearance of this film for many years, with no satisfaction. You see, I saw it as a child, and there are VERY few films that have remained with me from that long ago. (This very day happens to be my 77th birthday).

It is a touching tale involving a favored hunting dog that somehow gets caught in an animal trap and spends a stormy night baying for some help, but unreachable due to the raging storm. At least, that's the way I remember it. When the storm lets up, the anxious searchers who could hear him but could not locate or get to him find his trapped and dead body. It was so movingly done that I have never forgotten its effect on me.

Irv Thomas