Cowboy na África

Round-Up Time In Texas does not really fit in with the whole cowboy movie genre. Why did Gene and Frog have to have an adventure in South Africa? I'll bet it was because a set was built for a jungle picture and it was cheap for the studio to use it as often as possible before tearing it down. Stock footage of a lion shows up in the movie along with a guy in a gorilla suit. Plenty of black African extras are in this movie. Funny how those South African streets look like a Texas town, isn't it?

The movie is fun to watch, but it is not a western. It is about as much of a western as The Phantom Empire. You get a cowboy, some horses, and some western songs, but that's about it. Even though the cast is moving through the jungle to find a lost diamond mine, I kept trying to think of the movie in a Gene Autry western movie context. It just didn't work.

Smiley Burnette is good as usual. Earle Hodgins tried to have a bit of an accent in his character, but LeRoy Mason and most of the others in the cast speak just like they would in any other movie.

Round-Up Time In Texas is worth watching if you are a fan of Gene Autry movies, but should not be high on a priority list unless you want to watch truly weird movies.

The title of this astonishingly silly farce is somewhat misleading as the vast majority of the action, after the initial five minutes, continues in South Africa's Cape Colony, to which Gene Autry and his customary 1930s sidekick Frog Millhouse (Smiley Burnette) have travelled in order to deliver a herd of wild horses to Gene's brother, a diamond miner who requires the steeds for his mining activity and who apparently can find no saddle horses nearer than Texas. From the moment the two cowboys arrive in Africa, there are few scenes that make any sense at all, as we see the pair captured by a native tribe, after escaping an attack by lions, and while in captivity Frog instructs a young tribal quintet (The Cabin Kids, stars of many Hal Roach shorts) in Western rhythm songs, which the youngsters sing in instantly acquired English, one of many welcome musical interludes. The title song, also known as "When the Bloom is on the Sage" is warbled by Autry and others, beautiful mezzo Maxine Doyle, Gene's love interest, sings a South African drinking song, and the grotesque tale obeys a pull into musical moments at nearly any time, yet it is the hilarious voodoo chanting by the feckless tribe and an amorous gorilla suited character which boggle, whereas to state that this is an off-beat venture is a feeble description of a film that one must see to believe, but that one probably mustn't.

Gene delivers horses to a diamond mine in, where else, but darkest Africa.

The only thing I can figure is that some careless studio secretary got the pages of an Autry western mixed up with a Tarzan script. How else to explain the lunacy of our cowboy heroes meeting up with an "ooga-booga" tribe of witch-doctors in darkest Africa. Somehow, it's weirdly entertaining since you don't know what sort of craziness comes next—gorillas, lions, or flame- throwers. There're a number of good bits even if the premise is wacko— some tuneful songs, the charming Cabin Kids, plus Burnette and Hodgins doing their amusing bits, including a crash-bang finale. I'm just wondering how many ticket-buyers in 1936 left the theater wondering if their maps had gotten Texas all wrong. Oh well, like the movie or not, it sure isn't your typical matinée fare.

Now of course you would think that a film entitled Round-Up Time In Texas starring Gene Autry would be located in the Lone Star State. Not by a longshot. In this film Gene gets a telegram from his brother Tex Autry who's over in South Africa where he and a partner have made a rich diamond strike. Tex tells Gene to send over 50 head of Texas cow ponies and what he can't use he'll auction off.

Hard to believe that in 1937 he would have to send over to Texas for horses, but Gene gets the message and he and Smiley Burnette board a boat from Galveston to Capetown. And then they head to the town of Dunbar where Tex was heard from.

Traditional cowboy villain LeRoy Mason maybe operating in South Africa, but he's not lost any nastiness. He and a native gang ambush Tex and his partner and kill the partner and frame Tex. Gene arrives and hears Tex is wanted for murder. Autry's on the hunt now.

One of my big pet peeves about films from Hollywood dealing with Africa is that a couple of generations of Americans got their ideas about Africa from films like this. In this film for instance the term "kaffir" is used to describe the native population. Back in 1937 I'll bet those in charge of Republic Pictures from Herbert J. Yates on down had no idea that that word was a term of disparagement as bad as the "n" word in America. They should have known better, but few in America knew anything about Africa.

The natives in the film behave like a combination of stereotyped blacks in American located films and American Indians in those same films. Looks ridiculous. You will also not hear one person sound like they come from South Africa. The closest you get is American western character actor Earl Hodgins who talks like a London cockney.

The voortrekkers in South Africa used covered wagons like our American Conestogas and I suppose a saloon is a saloon anywhere on planet earth. So maybe knowing this, Yates felt secure in making a South African locale picture for his number cowboy star.

I did learn one thing though from Round Up Time in Texas. I learned the origin of the song When the Bloom is on the Sage which Gene Autry sings and includes the title of the film. I had Bing Crosby's record of it and it's a nice western ballad. Gene does well by it too.

If this god awful film ever made it to Johannesburg, Capetown, or Pretoria they must have been rolling in the aisles with laughter at the dumb American's idea of their country.

contrary to another comment that they must have used a set built for a jungle film---it was actually the Republic Studios back lot western set that was used for this film. as well as the back lot jungle area already there at the time. The western set was used as a number of other locations over the year also. The Spanish arches seen in the film were at the Mexican village part of the set and used over the years as a fort, a North African village, etc; all they do is shoot from different camera angles and place the appropriate foliage and decorations here and there, and voilà!!! They can be anywhere. the western street was strange in the movie as South Africa, it having been used numerous times in movies and TV westerns. The republic studios back lot was part of the CBS Studio Center beginning in the mid 60's or so and even Gunsmoke used that set a number of times.