The Desert Trail

John Wayne and Eddy Chandler play a strange combination of friends in The Desert Trail. Wayne's a fast living rodeo cowboy and Chandler is gambler/conman. They fight a whole lot about everything, cards, liquor, women. There kind of a western version of James Cagney and Pat O'Brien.

When Wayne decides he's not going to get stiffed out of rodeo prize money he won, they take matters into their own hands, taking precisely what's owed Wayne. Of course when two real robbers, Al Ferguson and Paul Fix decide to clean out the rest of the rodeo cash and kill the promoter, our heroes get blamed for it and have to spend nearly the rest of the film on the run.

Of course this is a Lone Star cheapie that the Duke stars in here with production values severely limited. This one however had the potential to be something better. At a better studio with a tighter script and their production values, this could have been a Duke classic.

As it is it's one of his better B pictures from Monogram.

This old B-western features John Wayne as rodeo star John Star who travels to Rattlesnake Gulch with his partner Kansas Charlie. John wins $900 but the rodeo claims a poor turnout means they will only pay twenty five cents on the dollar... they insist on full payment. Immediately afterwards two crooks holdup the rodeo office and fatally shoot the manager before managing to deflect blame on John and Kansas. These two are forced to flee but learn that the actual killers have headed to Poker City so they head there, separately, and take the names Jones and Smith respectively. Here they are both attracted to shop girl Anne, who is the sister of one of the killers. Now they must clear their names before the law catches up with them.

This is a fairly typical B western of the era... the plot is pretty simple and offers few real surprises. It is still fun though. The way the friends fall for the same woman twice is amusing, especially when they flirt with Juanita; a less than honest woman. Also amusing is the way Wayne ogles Anne as he gets her to retrieve items from a top shelf; not what I expected in a film of the Hays Code era! The action is okay but the lack of Yakima Canutt means we don't get the great horse stunts of many John Wayne films of the era. Anybody who has seen 'The Man from Utah' will get a sense of déjà vu as the rodeo scenes are the same as were used in that film... the crowded stands make the rodeo's claim that they are short of cash seem rather implausible. Overall this isn't his best film of the time but Wayne fans should still enjoy it well enough.

Pretty good B-Western of the venerable "bickering buddies" formula benefits from Duke Morrison's increasing confidence as an actor and comfort with the "John Wayne" persona, as well as from the increasing willingness to let Wayne play characters with a bit of an edge, rather than the Roy-Rogers-type goodie-goodies of his earlier films.

Definitely worth a look for fans of the Duke.

7/10

The opening scene in the stagecoach is hilarious. Wayne shows a real comedic talent here and throughout this tongue-in-cheek 60 minutes that he seldom showed as a super-star. The dialogue surrounding Wayne's and Kansas's competition over the girls is delightfully funny. So is the scene with Anne having to stretch out for Wayne's ogling benefit. Credit should go to writer Lindsley Parsons and director Lewis Collins who keeps Wayne loose and in the mood. And where did the guy playing Kansa come from. He looks more like a banker than a side-kick. But he sure knows his way around a laugh line. Pairing him with Wayne is almost inspired.

I guess an entry like this is largely a matter of taste. It departs from the matinée formula by emphasizing a rather adult level of humor. Probably, most kids didn't much like it. The plot is pretty good, more coherent than most, with the usual hard-riding, big-shooting action. One thing for sure-- Lone Star didn't pop for locations on this one. I can almost see the LA outskirts in the distance. Anyway, this one gave me a lot more chuckles than I ever expected, and I may be wrong, but I don't think Wayne ever again reached quite this level of relaxed comedic acting.

Well, this is the first I've seen one of John Wayne's B-westerns, pre-Stagecoach, and I watched for one reason only: It's the only one that features a grown-up Mary Kornman, formerly of the silent "Our Gang" series. Her charms are still ample here as when she was a pre-teen but her part mainly calls for her to react to the "arguments" between Wayne and his conman cohort, Eddy Chandler. There's a funny scene in the beginning where Wayne manages to woo Carmen Laroux while Chandler has to sit silently because earlier the latter promised to act "dumb" so he wouldn't get mixed up with another woman but the way Wayne stomps on Chandler's foot every time the latter tries to punch him never became funny with me. A later scene with the Duke asking for some tonic on the top shelf is funny though since Kornman seems partly aware of John wanting to check her out! The story itself fits the 52-minute running time so there's no stretching at the seems. All in all, The Desert Trail was a somewhat enjoyable time-waster. P.S. There's a mix of both actual score music by Lee Zahler from the original print and latter-day additional scoring from William Barber that are obvious depending on how the music sounds though Barber's score isn't too distracting. And Ms. Kornman eventually became an expert horsewoman herself before she died on June 1, 1973.