Men of America

Up until 1935, William Boyd was a popular but minor movie star playing in a wide variety of films. However, in 1935 he played his first western as 'Hopalong Cassidy' and he soon became a big B-western star. "Men of America" is one of many westerns Boyd made before adopting the Hopalong Cassidy character as his own.

"Men of America" is a western set in the modern day....and isn't so much a western as a story set out in the rural west. Unknown to the small town of Paradise Valley, in the nearby canyon are a group of hardened criminals hiding out from the law. These robbers, however, are not particularly successful, as their last job only netted them thousand dollar bills (which would be impossible to spend without alerting the authorities) and they are becoming hungry. So, they begin robbing from the nearby townspeople--and everyone in town is wondering WHO is doing this. Eventually, their misdeeds result in a murder...and the dopey folks in town immediately assume Jim (Boyd) is behind it even though they've known him for years and have trusted him. Can Jim use common sense to get these folks to focus on finding the real source of the problems or is he going to be strung up by a lynch mob?

The film is never dull and is filled with interesting camerawork....something you don't expect from just a B-movie. What I also didn't expect was the unusually violent and graphic finale...very satisfying but shocking. Overall, a very well made B...one that might help change your mind about such quick and inexpensive movies.

An exciting, atypical "modern" western in that automobiles as well as horses are used by the ranchers. Set in 1932, bank robbers are hiding out and laying low after a foolish robbery of $50,000 in $1000 banknotes, which gang leader Cicero knows cannot be spent. With no other money, they resort to stealing food from the local ranchers, but are discovered, leading to a climactic battle. I enjoyed the modern setting, which sets it apart from the usual B-western 1930's format, and the suspense had me biting my fingernails. The screenplay is excellent for this type of movie and the direction, by Ralph Ince, who also plays the villain, moves along at a good pace. William Boyd shows some of his skills that made him a star in the series of Hopalong Cassidy films a few years later, and Charles "Chic" Sales (who provides some of the comedy) and Dorothy Wilson (who provides the love interest) are good in their co-starring roles.

I started watching this with low expectations. After all, it was a one hour B programmer from RKO in 1932 with no big stars in it. But, wow, was I wrong.

The film starts out showing the past in just a couple of scenes of Smokey Joe Miller (Chic Sale).It shows him shooting it out while riding the Commanche Trail with a herd of cattle in 1887, and later shooting it out against bandits while riding shotgun on a stagecoach in 1899. But those days are behind him now, the west is tamed, and it is 1932. Now Smokey runs a country store in California, surrounded by small farms. His granddaughter, Anne (Dorothy Wilson) is in love with a farmer (Bill Boyd as Jim Parker) who is having a tough go of it. He's a WWI vet and as a result gets certain financial aid for his farm. Smokey Joe knows nothing about Jim, except that he gets all kinds of pamphlets and money from the government, and somewhat resents him for that given his independent past. He wonders if such a fellow can take care of his granddaughter if they marry. Plus Jim does like to have a little fun at Joe's expense, and that doesn't help things.

Meanwhile gangsters who broke out of Leavenworth prison - the Cicero gang- have been robbing banks all the way from Kansas to the West. Their latest robbery has netted them 50 1000 dollar bills which they cannot pass. The smaller bills were being carried by a member of the gang shot down during the robbery. So here these desperate men are rich yet poor. Cicero says that this "hick country" is a great place to lay low, but in the meantime they have to eat. So all kinds of things start disappearing from the farms nearby - turkeys, liquor, fruit, vegetables, even silverware and sheets. The farmers gather in the country store and wonder who could be at the bottom of it. Joe thinks it is Jim Parker. After all, they know nothing about him and his farm is not doing well yet.

This is bad enough, but soon Jim is implicated in a murder of one of the farmers. Smokey Joe calls the sheriff only to be told that the sheriff is out campaigning on his law and order ticket and cannot be bothered with actual law enforcement until after his campaigning. What follows is a deputy talking like a recording of a campaign call you might get today. Joe hangs up and tells the other men that they cannot look to law enforcement, that they must form a posse and bring in Jim themselves. How does this all turn out? Quite interestingly in a shootout between the gang with their automatic weapons and the men of the town - including Jim - with only their rifles and guns. Cicero also has one more trick up his sleeve - he has managed to kidnap Anne.

The film is a precode and has a message that would not be allowed just two years later. In the middle of the Depression ordinary people had stopped counting on government to be of any help -signified by the sheriff - and they had best look to themselves for help. It also had an interesting message about diversity if you look close enough. Smokey was fighting Indians in the previous century, now one is a close friend. The Italian farmer looks at the Midwestern veteran Jim like a son, and enjoys giving him farming tips. Community is what you make of it.

Oddly enough, this was only Bill Boyd's second western. In the silent era he had been a romantic leading man, much like John Gilbert, and the coming of sound had not been kind to his career when it revealed his Okie accent. Chic Sale is actually only 47 here. Make-up and his lanky body made him believable as men twenty and thirty years older than his actual age. His own talent made him well received as the good hearted curmudgeon. He was actually only 11 years older than Boyd. Boyd was actually the guy with the REAL gray hair, gray since he was 24.

This is certainly an unusual hybrid of a film - gangsters, cowboys, and farmers. But it is very action packed and well acted. I'd highly recommend it.

"Men of America" is a little bit of drama and slight comedy, with a crime subplot in an early 20th century American Western setting. That's a mouthful, but it about covers what this film covers. As to the title, it's anybody's guess. It has cowboys and Indians, cowboys and outlaws, criminals and killers, good guys and bad guys, and regular folk. I guess that makes up the men of America.

But, overall this is a very hokey film. That goes for the plot, the screenplay and the acting. And the film quality reflects the difficulty of the first years of sound pictures with scene and set adjustments, screenplays, and casts.

This film is an early look at William Boyd in sound pictures. He had been around in silent films since1918, and made 56 of those. But, three years after this, he would appear in a film that would ensure his stardom as one of the most recognized characters in film of the mid-20th century. After starring in "Hop-a-Long Cassidy" in 1935, Boyd would play Hoppy in 66 more movies until 1952, when he then would have a TV series as the character, from 1952-54.

Along with Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey, Hoppy entertained millions of American youth in the Saturday matinees into the mid-1950s. I was one of those frequent Saturday show kids, when a dime would gain youngsters admission with a bonus one-cent bag of popcorn. And, while I can remember bits and pieces of those movies, they all seemed quite good to me. Indeed, those I have watched since then are all quite good. Most have some humor from the sidekicks, and sometimes they are just a little corny, reflecting the culture of the time. But they had good acting, action and enjoyable plots. None that I can recall were ever as hokey as this film.

I searched online to try to find out what actor appeared in the most movies as the same character, but couldn't find anything specific about that. From the IMDb Web site, I discovered that Gene Autrey appeared in 91 feature films as himself, playing a cowboy, sheriff, marshal or in another role. Roy Rogers appeared in 77 feature films as himself, sometimes as a sheriff or marshal. But I couldn't find any other actor who played another character role other than himself in more feature films than William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy.

Here's the best sample of the script with a small bit of humor in this film.

Smokey Joe Miller, "That's the thanks you get for makin' California safe for the females." Abby, the U. S. Mail clerk, "Eh, it's safe - too safe. Too tame, you mean. It's fools like you that stopped the thrills." Smokey Joe, "Thrills? Who'd you ever thrill?"

A gang of modern bank robbers has a hideout in a western state which is pretty remote and generally inaccessible due to an earthquake. But it's the bad luck of Ralph Ince's men that in the last job all they got away with large denomination bills, thousand dollar bills to be exact. Hard to spend and easily traceable.

So Ince and his guys have to resort to a lot of petty thievery in the area just to eat. For reasons I'm still not clear about suspicion falls on our hero William Boyd, the future Hopalong Cassidy. But Italian immigrant farmer Henry Armetta gets wise to the gang and dies for his trouble. Armetta has his usual gang of kids left without a dad.

This is a remote region and apparently has a sheriff that doesn't give it that much attention. So it's up to the folks living there to face down the city gangsters who have tommy guns and they have hunting rifles.

The NRA is certainly going to love this film.

Men Of America is a scant 58 minutes running time but it does pack a lot of plot into it. It's an average B programmer and the cast does well by the material.