Roll on Texas Moon

With Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and Sons Of Pioneers you know the music has to be great and it was. With excellent English actors Elisabeth Rison and Dennis Hoey of Sherlock Holmes fame, the acting was first rate too. Long time character actor, Francis McDonald and well known henchman, Edward Keane turned in solid performances. Of course all time best sidekick Gabby Hayes was in rare form. This time with a very friendly lamb who kept pestering Gabby to no end. The war of the sheepherders versus the cattlemen comes to a head with an ending that won't disappoint. Roll On Texas Moon has to be part of any fan of western movies.

The plot to "Roll on Texas Moon" is very familiar if you've watched a bunch of B-westerns...and because it's such an overused plot, the film is a bit lazy. It also features a sacchariny-sweet dream sequence...another reason this film could never make a list of my favorite Roy Rogers pictures!

When the story begins, cattleman Gabby (Gabby Hayes) is accused of shooting a sheepherder. However, oddly, this element of the story seems to just stop and once the sheriff takes Gabby, he soon releases him and nothing more is said of this! Soon the scene changes to a meeting with a government official and Roy. Roy is being sent back to investigate the animosity that's sprung up between the sheep and cattle folks....and when I saw that one of the ranch hands at Dale's ranch was Francis McDonald, I KNEW he was one of the baddies. This is because McDonald is one of the most type-cast B-western actors of the day. He ALWAYS played villains...often the trusted #2 man behind the big boss baddie. He also LOOKED swarthy and evil. But who else is behind the growing animosity? See the film and find out for yourself...or not.

The dream sequence was awful. The plot was lazy. But I am not giving the film a lower score because I loved seeing Gabby and his new best friend...these scenes were very cute without being too cloying. Overall, a sub-par Roy Rogers film...mostly because it's all been said and done before by not just Rogers but several other cowboy stars.

By the way, if you want to see this film (and I am not strongly recommending you do), it's on YouTube AND it's the original full-length version, not a trimmed down for television print.

Roll On Texas Moon is a decent entry in the Roy Rogers film catalog. The film finds him trying to stop a feud between the cattlemen and the sheepmen from tearing apart the neighborhood just like the differences used to do in the Old West days.

Roy's dad back in the day was big on getting rid of sheepmen by fair or foul means, but Roy has a live and let live attitude. So does Dale Evans who's aunt is Elizabeth Risdon, owner of a Sheep Ranch with the Old West name of Cactus Kate. She's more than a match for that grizzled old cattleman Gabby Hayes.

What I liked most about Roll On Texas Moon was the reteaming of the antagonists Hayes and Risdon from the John Wayne classic Tall In The Saddle. That one is one of my favorite Wayne films and there is a running rivalry between Hayes and Risdon. Hayes is his usual grizzled, bearded self, but Risdon in that film plays an eastern woman accompanying her niece. Gabby deals with her in the usual Gabby fashion there. Here in Roll On Texas Moon, Risdon is more than a match for Gabby, though in the end it's hinted there might be a little senior citizen romance in the offing.

Western fans especially B western aficionados will be somewhat taken aback by the presence of Dennis Hoey. The distinguished British actor best known for being Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, probably grabbed at his chance to be in a western and add it to his list of credits.

The title song is a nice one, Roy recorded it back in the day and it suits him perfectly. So does this unpretentious B western from the factory owned by Herbert J. Yates known as Republic Pictures.

Gabby Hayes is plumb disgusted by sheep, particularly Dale Evans' pet lamb that follows him back to his ranch. He's just been cleared of murdering one of Miss Evans' men who strayed onto his land. The simmering dispute between the ranchers and sheepherders is on the bubble and look to be about to break into active warfare, so the cattle company sends Roy Rogers down to Texas to deal with the situation.

If this isn't the peak of the Roy Rogers westerns, it's pretty close to it. Gabby gets a great comic turn as he is pursued by the lamb; Roy & Miss Evans' duet of the title song is very charming, and if the bad guys reveal themselves in private dialogue to the audience, leaving Roy to figure it out the hard way, well, Republic knew he was their moneymaker, and gave him good stories, a fine director in William Witney, and some nice camerawork by William Bradford, who offers some striking angles and good portrait work. With Elisabeth Risdon, and the usual cast of character actors, including the Sons of the Pioneers.

When a neighboring sheep rancher is found murdered on his property, by sheep-hating cattleman Gabby Whitaker, hostilities begin to heat up between the local factions. Cattleman Roy Rogers is quickly dispatched from the home office in Chicago to diffuse the situation and find the culprits. Evidence leads him to the sheep ranch where he joins forces with the murdered rancher's daughter Jill (Dale Evans)over the protests of her aunt, old battle-axe, cattle-hater, Cactus Kate (Elisabeth Risdon).

Roll on Texas Moon is the first teaming of Roy and B-western great director William Witney. Over the course of the next 5 years Witney would change the style of the Roy Rogers' pictures from a musically oriented singing cowboy to the Action Cowboy Hero. After watching this one it's clear that Witney was really good at the latter, no so much with the former. Promising action sequences quickly give way to oddly selected and placed musical numbers. One musical interlude has Roy singing a lullaby to Gabby and the title tune, which is introduced in a Gabby dream sequence, has Dale dressed as Little Bo peep, making Betty Boop faces at Roy. The whole number seemed uncomfortably out of place. It should be noted that despite the inauspicious start, Witney righted the ship in their next film "Home in Oklahoma", a film very similar in substance and plot.

While you can occasionally see in this movie what was eventually to come of the Roy Rogers / William Witney collaboration, Roll on Texas Moon wasn't one of the pair's better efforts. Recommended for die-hard Roy Rogers Fans only.