Le fantôme

"Haunted Gold" was one of six "B" westerns produced by Warner Bros. for the 1932-33 season starring John Wayne. They were either out and out remakes of silent Ken Maynard films or they borrowed liberally, stock footage of Maynard and his horse Tarzan.

The plot involves an abandoned gold mine haunted by a mysterious stranger known only as "The Phantom". Cowboy John Mason (Wayne) and his sidekick Clarence (Blue Washington) ride in to the mine site. Joe Ryan (Harry Woods) and his gang have already arrived looking for a lost gold treasure. Mason and Ryan are half owners of the mine, Mason having inherited his share from his father and Ryan having cheated the rightful owner out of his share.

Lurking about are the mine's former manager Tom Benedict (Erville Anderson) and his servant Simon (Otto Hoffman). Janet Carter (Sheila Terry) the daughter of the rightful owner of her half interest is also on hand. It seems that all have been summoned to the site by mysterious notes to each from "The Phantom". Meanwhile, "The Phantom" skulks about peering out from behind secret panels keeping an eye on the proceedings.

Mason and Janet team up to foil Ryan's attempts to gain control of the gold. Finally, "The Phantom's" identity is revealed and.................

This film is arguably the best of Wayne's six Warner Bros. westerns. There were better production values than he would have in his later Lone Star westerns and he had the advantage of working for a major studio. The animated owls over the opening titles are the work of Producer Leon Schlesinger who was better known as the head of Warners Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon factory.

Wayne and his horse "Duke" were made up to match stock shots of Maynard and "Tarzan" in the earlier silent films. Long shots of the hero and horse and most of the stunts and stunt riding is Maynard.

Having been filmed in 1932, two years before the implementation of Hollywood's Production Code, this film contains several racial slurs involving the "Clarence" character who is black. He is called both a "Darkie" and "Sambo", by the Woods character and is referred to as the hombre with "the watermelon accent" by gang members. Wayne's character even calls him "boy" in one scene.

For trivia buffs, look for the statue that was used as the falcon in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) atop the heroine's organ as she plays.

An early Wayne western. Very entertaining and just plain fun! Wayne plays John Mason. He receives a letter prompting him to return and claim his half of a gold mine called the "Sally Anne". When Wayne returns he finds a girl … imagine that! She by chance had also received a letter.

He then finds himself taking on some bandits in a haunted mine with a crazy catacomb of tunnels, under a ghost town, complete with creepy shadows, trap doors, secret passages & even organ music. As stated above it's just a fun who-dun-it. A weird kind of mix of mystery meets western. To the best of my recollection this had never been done prior to this movie ... and even if it had it was still a bit refreshing for me.

An early John Wayne western that only ran for an hour, this was surprisingly entertaining. Since he was a beginning actor and this was a Grade B-type of production, I didn't except it to be so entertaining, although now that I've watched a lot of early '30s films, I am not surprised. Movies in that era were pretty fast- moving ones.

What makes this fun is the combination of western action, a few spooky things and comedy. The latter is mostly supplied by Blue Washington who plays "Clarence Washington Brown," a Mantan Morleand-like character. Yeah, I know this kind of role is demeaning to blacks and it's almost embarrassing to watch nowadays, but Washington was funny. The "western" part of the story is just so-so.

John Wayne made scores of B-Westerns in the thirties, and in some ways the few he did for Warner Bros. were among the more interesting, having somewhat better production values and execution. There are elements in "Haunted Gold" that would never have been covered by the budget of one of his Monogram programmers, but that's not saying much. It's pretty much the same old thing we'd see from Wayne for the next six or seven years -- good guy helps a sweet young thing outwit nefarious baddies out to cheat her or him out of something. Wayne has physical charm yet is still a callow actor at this time, though no one does much real acting in these. There's no George Hayes to lend true gravitas to the situation, and Erville Alderson, while always an interesting specimen to look at in the movies, is really terrible as a performer in the solid older man part. It's all not really much, until an exciting fight in a cable car between Wayne and an outlaw near the end. What is most notable (and most difficult) about the movie is the sidekick character, Clarence. "Haunted Gold" isn't the first nor would it be the last Hollywood movie to give a black actor bug-eyed terror and clichéd dialect for racial comic effect. But if there can be degrees of acceptability to such stereotyping, this movie seems to take it to a painful degree. For one thing, Blue Washington, who plays Clarence, is a strong, masculine figure of a man -- tall, muscled, intelligent of mien -- yet he scampers about whimpering about spooks and monsters like skinny little Willie Best. It seems immeasurably more degrading (though I'm not suggesting it wasn't degrading for other actors). Perhaps part of the difference is that Willie Best and Mantan Moreland, when they did their frightened "darkie" routine, were funny -- very funny. Watching Blue Washington do this stuff is like watching Sidney Poitier or James Earl Jones do it -- it's difficult not to focus on the humiliation of the actor. The script contains plenty of references to "darkies" and "Smoky" and "that watermelon accent," though Wayne's character treats Clarence more as an amusing comrade than a dimwit or a servant. But none of this makes "Haunted Gold" less uncomfortable an experience, at least if one has any empathy for Blue Washington, an actor who it seems had talent, even if it is sublimated beneath insensitive clichés here.

Haunted Gold is perhaps the closest John Wayne ever got to making a horror picture. It comes complete with secret passages, a ghostly figure, a graveyard, and a creepy butler.

There's great spooky atmosphere in the early scenes but the scary stuff is soon abandoned in favor of a more conventional tale featuring bandits and the theft of a gold mine.

The photography and sets are exquisite and the action scenes are top-notch, even if the script is typical. Fans of John Wayne and nineteen-thirties B-westerns will find it interesting if not entirely spectacular.

However, Haunted Gold is tainted a bit by the racial stereotypes represented by Wayne's annoying sidekick Clarence, played by Blue Washington. The modern viewer might get a little embarrassed while watching it.