La belle et le cow-boy

The programmer is basically a "personality" western that depends on the likability of its leads rather than lots of action. Don't expect much hard-riding or fast shooting. There is a cleverly choreographed saloon brawl showing off Roy's Tarzan skills. Unfortunately, about the only outdoor action are buckboards bouncing on a washboard road, again and again. Then too, the musical selections are nothing special, finishing up with a big production number as might be expected.

In the personality department, spunky little Mary Lee, as Chip, steals the film with her lively personality, while Roy and Dale serve up more likability in their first screen pairing. At the same time, an oafishly winning Big Boy Williams (Teddy Bear) serves up the chuckles as comedy relief. The plot's fairly standard— but for good guys Roy, Dale and Big Boy, baddie Hubbard is out to steal Chip's inheritance. So nothing special there. Anyway, the most that can be said for the 70-minutes is that it's a fairly pleasant assembly-line product. But maybe more importantly, it hints at why a youthful Roy and Dale made such a likably successful team, both on-screen and off.

A "5" on the matinée Scale.

In a joint book about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans that I recently read, it seems as though Herbert J. Yates at Republic Pictures had the idea that Roy could use a regular female singing star, the better to boost the audiences for his number one B picture cowboy at the time. He had under contract one Frances Octavia Smith renamed Dale Evans who had done about nine films in minor roles. She was most prominent in John Wayne's In Old Oklahoma as a second female lead.

Dale was understandably reluctant to do the film. Although she was born in Uvalde, Texas her thing was not exactly country/western. She was a band singer and a good one with Anson Weeks. Her ambition was to do musical comedy, she wanted very much to do the lead in Oklahoma and later do Annie Get Your Gun. But Yates was the boss so she agreed and the rest is history.

The film they were assigned to is Cowboy and the Senorita and truth be told it's not one of the great westerns of all time. Roy and sidekick Guinn Williams get themselves involved in saving an inheritance of a gold mine from the grasp of villain John Hubbard who's about to marry Dale, the older of the two sisters. Younger sister Mary Lee has run away because she dislikes her prospective brother-in-law so much. Roy and Big Boy save the day of course.

Cowboy and the Senorita is only important in that it was the first teaming of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. They did several pictures over the next few years and eventually married after Roy's first wife Arlene Wilkins died suddenly. After that Dale only teamed with Roy occasionally until they went to television as she was busy raising Roy's kids, her son by previous marriages and their children.

Until I saw this film I never knew Guinn Williams had done any films with Roy as sidekick. The version I have is the edited one for television and I think it's a lot of his footage that was edited out. Apparently he had a rivalry going with Fuzzy Knight that looked interesting and funny and I'd certainly like to have seen more of it.

A historic landmark and it shows Herbert J. Yates apparently did have good business sense when it didn't involve his wife Vera Hruba Ralston. On the other hand he could have asked Roy to take Vera as his next leading lady.

Same old villains and same old plot devices ... the villain is always ahead of the good guys because he in on the plans first hand while he sneakily plods ahead with his own scheme of defrauding the owner of the mine ... rogers finally saves the day and the young girl gets her 16th birthday present, a gold mine

This was actually a fun movie to watch. Mary Lee was a little more grown up from her Gene Autry days and got higher billing than Dale Evans. There were a couple nice songs, a decent story, pretty good action, and of course a happy ending. Fuzzy and Big Boy Williams had a pretty funny bit of friction between them which made the movie more enjoyable. A funny scene with Big Boy was when he tried to swing from the chandelier like Roy and pulled it right out of the ceiling. Take a look at the plot summary on this page. It describes Dale as Mary Lee's cousin - but she was her half-sister. It says the mine was going to be sold on her 17th birthday, but it was her 16th. It calls Big Boy Williams 'Bad Boy'. It calls out a couple songs that weren't in the picture. Not exactly sure it was describing the same movie.

Cowboy and the Senorita (1944)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Roy Rogers and 'Teddy Bear' (Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams) show up in a small town looking for jobs when they're befriend by a young girl (Mary Lee) and her keeper (Dale Evans). Rogers and Bear are given jobs looking after the young girl and it turns out that she has a valuable mine, which a greedy man (John Hubbard) is trying to con her out of. After several double crosses Rogers tries to get evidence to show what's going on. COWBOY AND THE SENORITA isn't the best film Rogers ever made but it's a decent "B" Western that is also remembered for being the first film between Rogers and his future wife Evans. Overall the story here certainly isn't anything too special as the entire "ripping off someone for their mine" had been done to death by the time talkies came into play. With that said, the director and cast do good enough of a job to at least make you care for the characters and want to see the bad punished and the good walking away without any trouble. It certainly doesn't hurt that the cast members are in such fine form and this of course starts with Rogers who once again plays that kind-hearted soul just doing what's right. That laid back style really comes across good here and that chemistry with Evans is on full display. The two really seem to be flirtatious throughout the film and they manage to mix it up quite well. Lee is also very impressive in her part as is Hubbard as the hissing villain. It was pretty funny seeing Williams in a Western like this as he was often seen in gangster pictures from the likes of Warner. There's certainly nothing ground breaking to be found here but if you're a fan of low-budget Westerns then this here is a decent time killer. It should be noted that the most common version out there is missing nearly twenty-minutes worth of footage most of which is song and dance numbers.