Sob o Sol do Arizona

I'm not necessarily a fan of the 'Duke' but I do enjoy a good Western - and this one isn't. Technically, it's rough and ready and I suppose typical for an unrestored print that's nearly 80 years old.

At least there's some action - quite a lot of it but is essentially Wayne either singly on horseback, chasing after someone, or having fisty-cuffs with someone. And, yes, there's a shoot-out.

The other reviewer of this title did a fine job pointing out the plot, for what it is.

The half Native American girl is quite sparky, the Duke speaks in monotones and is rather wooden but the love interest (she finds him wounded by a river) Clara, (Sheila Terry) is more natural and a welcome diversion.

However despite all this, it's quite watchable, in a rudimentary sort of way and if it wasn't John Wayne, we wouldn't even be watching it and nor would have TCM bothered to air it, which is where I saw the movie.

Neath the Arizona skies is one of the better early John Wayne efforts. It is clear watching this film that he was growing in stature as an actor since the very early efforts where he was often a bit wooden.

It's quite crisply filmed and has a more interesting if still quite clumsy plot than many of his early efforts. Here he attempts to keep safe a little Indian girl ( a cute Shirley Jean Rickett) who who a price on her head.

There are the familiar stunts including one great one near the end, the obligatory shootout and of course his usual sidekick Gabby Hughes manages to get involved as well.

This is another one that is really just for John Wayne fans only but if you are one this is worth watching.

This rates as the worst of the Duke's early shoot-em-ups that this writer has seen. Still, the worst John Wayne western has much to offer. My big beefs are that the plot line has a hole in it so big you could drive a stagecoach through it. The hero Chris Morrell meets a girl named Clara who turns out to be the sister of his slain friend Bud Moore. Later, she introduces him to her brother Jim, who earlier had switched shirts and hats with an unconscious Chris at the riverbank. Yet, despite being best friend to her brother, Chris doesn't seem to know that Bud had a sister AND a brother who is a bad enough hombre that his first appearance in this film is robbing an express office. Even more implausible is that Clara doesn't recognize the shirt that Chris is wearing at the riverbank as being identical to one belonging to her brother, especially since it appears as something so dressy that no self-respecting cowboy would wear it in public except to a dance. Another bigger beef that rates as a GOOF comes at the movie's beginning. While packing Nina's clothes for their journey,Chris tells her they're heading north to find her dad. Since they're still presumably in Oklahoma, which is east but not south of Arizona, a northward journey means the picture should be retitled "Neath Nebraska Skies." Despite its faults, it's a pretty typical B western with not much to distinguish it from Wayne's other Lone Star pictures, except for the Shirley Temple wannabe they stuck in this picture. Shirley had nothing to fear from the competition here. Dale Roloff

Neath The Arizona Skies finds John Wayne as the guardian of little Shirley Jean Rickert who is a half Indian little tyke who stands to inherit some really big bucks because property her Mother left before she died has oil on it. Dad's been out of the picture for some time and most believe he's dead. The Duke thinks otherwise and sets off to find him.

He's got Yakima Canutt and a gang he's leading for competition who would like nothing better than to snatch the girl, kill the father if he's alive and get guardianship of the fortune.

Remember this is 1934 and kidnapping stories were very commonplace in films because of the Lindbergh kidnapping a few years earlier.

I wish this film had been done by a major studio with production values of same. There is a good nugget of a plot idea here and it could have been developed a lot better than it was.

Still it's not bad for a Lone Star production for John Wayne and I think more than Duke devotees might like it.

Another of John Wayne's cheapie westerns made for Lone Star. This one has him protecting a half-Indian girl while he searches for her father and fights off an outlaw (Yakima Canutt) who wants the girl and her father for reasons of his own. As is typical with these westerns, the best parts are the stunts. It's a fairly standard oater with not a whole lot recommend to those who aren't big fans of the Duke. The little girl is clearly a white kid with a terrible black wig on. She's a pretty bad actress, too. Hearing her repeatedly call Duke "Daddy Chris" is enough to turn your stomach. If you've seen any of the low-budget westerns Duke made in the '30s, you pretty much know what to expect here. If you haven't, go ahead and watch it but be prepared that there is nothing challenging here. It's a very simple cardboard story that runs less than an hour. Harmless but unsatisfying.