Hollywood Cowboy

Hollywood COWBOY George O'Brien does battle with carpetbagging gangsters from the city who are trying to set up a protection racket in Wyoming. Can O'Brien beat the gangsters (led by "Ming the Merciless", Charles Middleton) with their airplanes and tommy-guns, with just a six-shooter and a sidekick named Shakespare trying to avoid a divorce subpoena?

OK, the plot here, with the odd combination of the current day and old fashioned western action, is more than passing strange, but it does have the advantage of being something different. George O'Brien (the lead in F.W. Murnau's Sunrise and Michael Curtiz's Noah's Arc) also is several acting leagues above the average western star. As a result, the film is a bit better than average for a B, particularly as O'Brien does not take his role particularly seriously, and always seems about to burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all. What might be a problem for the B western fan is that there is no pleasant western music (sorry Autey, Rogers and Ritter fans), nor is there a lot of typical western action (sorry Tom Mix fans). Instead, the better parts of the movie are played for laughs, and the action scenes appear to have been lifted from more expensive dramas.

The result is OK, with almost a Wild Wild West feel, but it is a dead end as far as a genre film is concerned. (How can you do a series of films, when the lead characters seem invested in the absurdity of the whole enterprise?) It's probably not surprising that later westerns done by O'Brien for RKO are more serious.

George O'Brien and writer Joe Caits are vacationing in Wyoming between pictures. O'Brien spots Cecilia Parker, and decides to hire on at the ranch of her aunt, Maude Eburne. Meanwhile Charles Middleton is setting up a protection racket for cattle.

O'Brien is funny in a smug way as Miss Parker's would-be lover, Frank Milan, tries to high-hat the confident O'Brien to no avail. It's the third of four movies that O'Brien starred in for producer George Hirliman in an effort to get away from simple-minded oaters, and pretty good; even when the plot starts up, there are lots of airplanes flying around to let you know this isn't one of those.

"Hollywood Cowboy," as this film is now known, has a special charm about it because it stands on a fairly unusual platform for being, which is that the characters are assembled here owing to western movie making, of all things. This is a contemporary western, that is to say the wild west comes alive in the year of roughly 1937, and plenty of cars and even airplanes are on hand. As with many George O'Brien B-westerns, there is a more gentle air about this movie than many of its brethren, with the gun play and horse-mounted action hovering at a fair minimum. George O'Brien does a good job of portraying his part with subtle humor throughout, and it is a pleasure to have a fairly well-known actress of the era (Cecilia Parker) play the leading lady. In general, however, the acting in the film is only standard and there is little evidence of sets or cinematography beyond the ordinary. The final defining scene was surprising for B-westerns, it must be granted, but not really impressively staged beyond expectations. So all in all, if you have time to take a look at a fairly good B-western built on an unusual foundation and containing a different kind of final roundup, go ahead and take a look.

This is not a great movie but it is a hoot. I mean where else can you see gangsters coming from the big city using aircraft to bomb their prey and disrupt a cattle drive. The accuracy of those ex-World War I pilots was uncanny and the secret ability of a hand grenade to blow up a dam should be exploited for modern day ordnance specialists who can only dream of such power in a small package. And all these gangsters wanted was a penny a pound to "protect" cattle from threat of non-delivery – very reasonable I would think.

Silent film star George O'Brien is effective as the hero and enjoyable to watch in his role. His biography is most interesting and worthy of your time. Charles Middleton is excellent as the heavy but I still prefer him as Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials. Maude Eburne turns in another great character actor performance.

The film quality of the version "Wings Over Wyoming" that I just saw on TCM was a bit grainy but the joy at watching such a unique B movie more than compensated. Some of the aviation sequences were likely lifted from other filming but what the heck, who cares. Better than most B Westerns and worth watching because it is so different.

The story has some unusual twists including Kramer, a white-collar criminal who plots to exploit a feud between cattlehands and cattlemen plus fleece cattlemen of money through a dummy Cattlemen's Protection Association.

George O'Brien plays Geoffrey Carter, a Hollywood cowboy shooting a western film at Lone Pine, CA. He just happens to rescue Joyce, a cattlewoman's daughter from the city gangsters and falls for her. Then he goes to work for her mother as an anonymous cattlehand.

The most interesting plot element is the use of a single-engine, dual wing biplane to frighten cattle and then a subsequent air dual with an aircraft from Hollywood flown by Carter's friend.

Final roundup of the criminals has a nice twist but the ending is standard Hollywood schmaltz. There are some holes in the story never resolved. But nothing out the ordinary for a 1937 RKO Radio Picture.

George O'Brien is adequate but the supporting cast never have opportunities to rise above predictable or pedestrian, which is simply a fault of the script. However, this is a 64 minute, low-budget B-western, so there was little time or reason to worry about character development. This is a rare film and not many prints exist either as Hollywood Cowboy or Wings Over Wyoming. Showcase Media of Studio City California 91604 has one, good, complete 16mm dupe print.