L'homme de l'Utah

Oh, brother, this one starts out with John Wayne riding his horse and singing like he's high on wacky tobacky. His singing voice is dubbed but that just makes it more embarrassing, I think. Anyway, this singing cowboy rides into town just as the bank is being robbed. He helps marshal Gabby Hayes stop the robbers and is immediately recruited to do some undercover work with a gang that's fixing rodeos...or something like that.

Polly Ann Young plays the female lead and she wears 1930s clothes even though this is supposed to take place in the Old West. There are also telephone poles throughout the entire movie that they don't even try to shoot around. They use stock footage during the rodeo scenes that clearly have people in 1930s attire in the audience. Historical accuracy was not a concern to the good people at Lone Star. This is one of many B westerns Wayne made in the '30s before he hit it big. The vast majority of these were forgettable but watchable oaters with little or nothing to recommend about them. A select few were better than average and many others were worse than average. This one's kind of crappy but if you have a good sense of humor and like to poke fun at bad movies, you might like it. Beware modern copies that have a terrible electronic score that often just starts at random spots in the movie.

Here's another of the cheap B westerns that John Wayne starred in between THE BIG TRAIL and STAGECOACH. He's singing - voice provided by Jack Kirk - on a slow horse with his last dollar. Marshall Gabby Hayes gets him to look into some baddies. Wayne romances Polly Ann Young and gets into a fixed rodeo.

The copy I looked at was pretty good, with some nice camerawork by Archie Stout, one of twelve he was DP on that year. This being a Paul Malvern production, little money was spent on anything, and the soundtrack was so odd, atypically filled with romantic violas and blaring brass, that I concluded it was added decades later, along with the Foley work.

It's directed at a good clip by Robert Bradbury, but no one was getting a fat contract with a major studio off this one. John Ford would rescue Wayne in 1939, and Stout, who had been DP on Demille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, a few years later.

Forget the guitar-strumming opening. This is Wayne at his youthfully charming best, relaxed and easy-going before the pressures of super-stardom and the booze bottle began to show .This is really a rodeo picture with lots of well-integrated footage of calf-roping, bull-dogging, and more, but no gun-play. (Am I wrong or do some of the pageant paraders look like they just staggered out of a saloon.) The baddies are trying to rip-off the town sponsors of the rodeo and only Wayne and the marshal stand in their way. It's fun watching the cantankerous Gabby character trying to break out from Hayes' serious marshal role. Polly Ann Young (Loretta's sister) with a really big smile makes a fetching love interest-- watch Wayne really plant one on her at fade-out. I don't know, but I thought the girl who played the Mexican Delores had a really phony accent. Then I checked the cast and came to find her movie credits are mostly Spanish language productions! Oh well, maybe she don't speak Spanish so good. Anyway, this is average Lone Star fare, mainly for rodeo fans who like seeing a bull's big neck get stretched or a scrawny little calf get thrown to the ground.

An American Western; A story set in Nevada about a saddle tramp who collaborates with a U. S. marshal to infiltrate rodeo racketeers who are secretly murdering any competitors so that they collect all the prize money. Simultaneously lively and dull, with its histrionics, simplistic dialogue, and simplistic storyline. John Wayne struggles along in the embarrassing glare of low production values, resorting to showcasing his trick-riding skills. There is stock footage of a real rodeo, the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, which provides some interesting footage of good stuntwork, but otherwise this is an unremarkable film.

I just watched a couple of John Wayne's old B-westerns on the Encore Channel and was taken aback by someone's brilliant idea to replace the musical soundtrack! Instead of the original music, new and much louder music is present--and it sounded especially weird with the electronic instruments used to make it. After all, it wasn't like they used synthesizers in 1934!! Overall, this is a BAD thing--and I recommend you just download the free movie as linked by IMDb, as the music is just annoying--and even worse than in "The Lucky Texan". What idiot thought doing this was a good idea?!

Like the other new tricked-out B I just saw ("The Lucky Texan"), this one also featured George "Gabby" Hayes. And, like "The Lucky Texan", you might have trouble recognizing Gabby at first, as he doesn't sport his usual huge raccoon-like beard...and is a bit more macho than usual. After all, you certainly don't expect to see him playing a US Marshall!

As for the plot, it's pretty bad...even by B standards. That's because HUGE segments of the film consist of nothing but old rodeo footage and the plot involving a fixed rodeo competition is a cheap way to make use of this film. Wayne plays 'Weston'--a guy who shows himself to be very handy with his fists, on a horse and with a gun. As far as his singing goes, like Wayne's 'Singing Sandy' films, it is very, very obvious that it's not him doing the singing and fortunately this singing persona soon was abandoned in upcoming films.

As a result of lots of padding and the Encore soundtrack, it's definitely among the least watchable of Wayne's B-westerns. It's really a shame, as normally Wayne's Bs hold up pretty well...just not this one.

By the way, please note the 1930s fashions on the leading lady. I guess historical anachronisms weren't much of a concern with this film!