The Light of Western Stars

This unassuming little Western from 1930 has a little of everything. The narrative structure is very interesting.

Story opens with a saloon full of men, including Richard Arlen. He's been on a drunk since his pal was shot and killed. He just can't get over it. But on that day's train comes the dead man's sister (Mary Brian), who's come to claim his ranch. Arlen (very drunk) runs into her on a sidewalk and tries to pick her up. She's alone in a strange town and terrified, but she gets away.

The next day Arlen shows up at the ranch with three pals, looking for work. She throws them out when she recognizes the drunk from the night before. A little later, another man (Fred Kohler) shows up to inform her the ranch is his because he paid the back taxes. He suggests they might make a deal and starts advancing on her when Arlen returns, fights with Kohler and chases him off.

From that point, it's up to Arlen to defeat Kohler and the crooked sheriff and ride off into the sunset with the girl.

This is a very straightforward story and the look of the film reminds of the old silent Westerns of William S. Hart. Nothing is gussied up: Brian wears plain dresses and the town looks like a wind-blown Old West town.

Arlen was never a great actor, but he's good in simple roles like this. Brian seems still to be struggling with dialog. The ethnic comic Harry Green shows up as a Jewish peddler. George Chandler, Syd Saylor, and Regis Toomey co-star.

Only an hour long, but a neat little film.

I thoroughly disliked The Light of Western Stars, and it is one of the three worst westerns I ever saw. Let's start with the worst of the worst. Harry Green. I had never seen Harry Green before, but he is the worst stereotype of a Jewish person I ever saw ( be basically makes Jackie Mason sound like William Powell or Ronald Colman). A character like that has no business being in a western. Then there is Richard Arlen ( Dick Bailey) and Regis Toomey (Bob Drexell). Those two have been in countless films and neither one has ever impressed me ( especially Toomey). Then there is Mary Brian. She was the best one in the movie ( probably because she is good looking ( although she was much better in The Virginian ( as was Arlen) and Only The Brave (both films had Gary Cooper which helped a lot, although I doubt even Cooper could have saved this movie))). I give it one star: Just for looking at Mary Brian.

Richard Arlen is trailing the mysterious man who killed his friend. First, though, he needs to get drunk. While doing so, he says he'll marry the first woman he sees, who turns out to be Mary Brian. That's lucky, because it might have been Harry Green in a dress; Green is in this movie as the comic relief. Miss Brian is in this movie because she's here to take over her father's ranch now that he's dead, which is in the hands of Fred Kohler. You don't think...!

This is one of the many Zane Grey westerns that Paramount filmed from 1930-1940, and while the writing looks good -- Grover Jones & William Slavens McNutt, with some uncredited work by Joseph Mankiewicz -- there's some very odd about the editing. At first I thought I was looking at a verion which had been badly butchered for a reissue in the 1950s, but it came in at exactly the listed running time. Given that. it looks like another poorly recorded outdoor talkie, with Arlen still not used to speaking in films. Green's Jewish peddler isn't particularly amusing, and Regis Toomey is present for a blandly unthreatening love triangle. Even worse, the pacing is start-and-stop after the initial bar room scene. For completists only.