Les Dalton arrivent

It is just shoddy handling that has made this splendid entertainment drop out of sight. It should have gone on accumulating admirers down the years.Director George Marshall missed out on attention too, though this film, DESTRY RIDES AGAIN and his succession of Glenn Ford films have a consistent, light handling that shows he was one of the best people in this field. Let's throw in the fact that Broderick Crawford has his biggest pre ALL THE KING'S MEN role. He gets as much screen time as top billed players Scott and Francis and acts them off the screen. He's terrific, in a straight role, as the chief Dalton Brother.

The film has the standard ingredients - shoot ups, chases, western timber town atmosphere, over-laid with the usual plot elements about the wrongly persecuted family. What isn't expected is the expert pacing, emphasis and the humor - the lynch mob bursting into the jail to find the whole gang waiting for them, guns drawn, is classic. The film also has one of the best filmings of the Yak Canutt routine of falling under the runaway coach horses. A class act.

In a strange role for Randolph Scott in a western, he never wears or fires a gun in When The Daltons Rode. In fact he's not even a Dalton brother just a family friend who falls for Kay Francis and she for him. But Kay's the girlfriend of Broderick Crawford one of the Dalton Brothers.

And it's especially strange that for a western that gets a lot of action into its 81 minute running time that Randolph Scott is no part of it.

The Daltons are played by Crawford, Brian Donlevy, Stu Erwin, and Frank Albertson. Though the plot is taken purportedly from the book authored by Emmet Dalton, it seems to have been more lifted from the 20th Century Fox film Jesse James. The Daltons together with their mother own a farm near Coffeyville, Kansas. A land holding company fronted by Harvey Stephens but really controlled by George Bancroft is after the Dalton farm to sell it to the railroad for a right of way. When a surveyor is killed accidentally Erwin, Donlevy, and Albertson are arrested. When it looks like the case is not going their way, despite Randolph Scott's defense of them, they break loose and turn outlaw. The rest of the film is almost a non-stop action view of their outlaw exploits until the legendary showdown in Coffeyville.

George Marshall keeps the action at one lively pace and the comic relief is supplied by, would you believe an amorous Andy Devine playing a Dalton friend and fellow outlaw.

But Randolph Scott in a suit, who'd have believed it.

Lawyer Randolph Scott arrives in Kansas just in time to witness childhood friends the Dalton brothers turned into outlaws and thieves, after doing battle with crooked business interests, stacked courts, and violent mobs of mindless vigilantes.

Top-billed Scott melts into the background as the film is easily stolen by it's real stars Broderick Crawford, Brian Donlevy, and Andy Devine, who plays an overweight, hayseed version of Casanova, who joins the Dalton boys in order to get away from the large amount of aggressive women in his life!

Excellent, rowdy entertainment, this features some really awesome stunt work from Yakima Cannut, including the classic stagecoach backslide, where the stuntman goes from being dragged between the horses to the back of the coach by letting go and grabbing the back axle, as well as several horse jumps onto and from trains and cliffs, truly eye-popping! There's some exciting gun-play at work here too.

A good example of twisted Hollywood history, there's so much sympathy for the outlaws here, it's hard to imagine this making it past the National Board Of Review!

A fast paced and often light-hearted film that purports to tell the story of the infamous Dalton gang, "When the Daltons Rode" boasts a fine cast of stalwart western actors under the sure direction of veteran George Marshall. Tod Jackson, a lawyer, stops in Kansas en route to Oklahoma to visit his childhood friends, the Dalton family. Convinced to stay long enough for a good visit, Jackson is smitten with the local telegraph operator and becomes involved in the Daltons' problems with a corrupt land-development company. The exciting action swings from a humorous melee in a courtroom to a wild shootout on the streets to robberies aboard speeding trains, although the film climaxes in a too-tidy finale.

Western icon Randolph Scott has top billing as Jackson, but he is often off screen, and Broderick Crawford, Brian Donlevy, George Bancroft, and Andy Devine all have nearly equal roles. A romantic-triangle subplot features Kay Francis, and Mary Gordon plays Ma Dalton, matriarch to the unruly Dalton brood. Devine is the comedy relief, and he has some good moments, although both he and Crawford ostensibly perform stunts that neither of the beefy actors could convincingly accomplish. However, the film's stunt team should take a bow for their outstanding work with a slide under a racing stagecoach, with leaps from rocky cliffs onto moving rail cars, and with jumps from a speeding train while on horseback. A behind-the-camera asset is Hal Mohr's fine black-and-white cinematography, which beautifully captures the action and the western landscapes.

If your Saturday matinees featured posses and gunfights, brawls and chases, laconic cowboys and pretty school marms, "When the Daltons Rode" will bring back fond memories of popcorn, Milk Duds, and 25-cent movie tickets. Lots of action, a smidgen of humor, and a touch of romance, Marshall's film may not be among the classic or even best-remembered westerns, but all the elements of a solid oater are present and in top form for an entertaining afternoon at the movies.

East coast lawyer Tod Jackson (Randolph Scott) travels to Kansas where he meets the Dalton brothers: Grat (Brian Donlevy), Bob (Broderick Crawford), Ben (Stuart Erwin), and Emmett (Frank Albertson). They're farmers, with Bob a local law man, but when a crooked land company tries to steal their property, the brothers end up fugitives from the law. They soon embark on a spree of bank and train robberies that mark them as the most wanted men in the region. Meanwhile, Tod makes time with Bob's girlfriend Julie (Kay Francis).

The cast is good, but the goofy script is almost 100% pure baloney, and production lurches from nicely competent to threadbare and cheap. One primary problem is that ostensible protagonist Scott is pointless to most of the story. I kept waiting for him to be reluctantly forced to go after his old friends, but that never happens. His character could have been removed from the whole thing with little change to the overall tale. I expected Donlevy to take the lead among the Daltons, but instead it's Crawford who gets the leadership role. Andy Devine plays the comic relief, naturally, but his character is also an inveterate skirt-chaser with a succession of women on his knee, not exactly what one expects from Devine.

Two odds points from the film: there's a scene where the gang robs a train, and they steal the horses belonging to lawmen on the train. The horses are on an open-top corral train car, and they actually ride them off of the side of the moving train. It looked like an extremely dangerous stunt for the horses, but it's shown with no cuts, and none of the horses seemed injured, despite some spills. There's also a big shoot-out in the movie with the gang members inside a saloon with their opponents outside in the street and on opposite buildings. There is a lengthy exchange of gunfire through the saloon's large picture window, and the window never breaks, instead the bullets passing through and leaving bullet holes. Once or twice I can believe it, but a succession of rifle and pistol shots through a large sheet of glass and no shattering? That's some strong glass!