La ruée sauvage

THE TEXANS (1938) offers some great second unit action scenes in its simple tale of a cattle drive from Indianola, Texas to Abilene, Kansas. We see hundreds of head of cattle forced to swim across the Rio Grande, followed by the cowboys' struggles with such obstacles as dust storms, snow storms, prairie fires, Indian attacks, and pursuit by the U.S. Army. These sequences are quite spectacular, but they're somewhat undermined by the awkward dialogue scenes between the stars. Randolph Scott stars as an ex-Confederate soldier whose idea of taking the cattle to Kansas to keep them from being confiscated for back taxes by the Carpetbagger administrator is taken up by rancher Joan Bennett and her team of cowboys-turned-rebels-turned-cowboys-again. Scott is supposed to be a war-hardened vet trying to survive in Reconstruction Texas, but he comes off as way too cleancut and restrained. The actor needed at least another decade to develop the kind of seasoning that made him such a sturdy western star in the late 1940s-to-early 60s (THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA, SEVEN MEN FROM NOW, THE TALL T, et al). Joan Bennett is terribly miscast here and plays it as if she's in a romantic comedy. Despite having to run off with the cattle with no time to pack her things, she somehow manages to conjure up a parade of fresh feminine fashions along the way and arrives in Abilene with a spanking new dress and bonnet, a new hairdo and fresh makeup. She's never remotely believable as a rancher and frontierswoman who'd kept her spread thriving during the war.

On the other hand, May Robson, as Joan's rough-hewn pioneer grandmother, is appropriately fierce and participates in the action as closely as anybody in the film. (She was near 80 when she made this!) SHE should have been the star. And Walter Brennan is his usual dependable self as the ranch foreman, Chuckawalla. Robson and Brennan are often together and the drama scenes benefit considerably when they're on screen. Raymond Hatton is another old hand at this kind of thing and he appears as Cal, Scott's frontiersman sidekick. The problem is, he literally arrives out of nowhere. When we last see Scott at the end of the opening sequence, where he's fought Union soldiers and helped Bennett escape with a shipment of rifles meant for die-hard Southern rebels, he's alone, unarmed, unhorsed and wearing an ill-fitting new suit of clothes that cost him everything he had. In the next scene, he shows up in a fresh buckskin suit, riding a horse, armed with pistols and rifle, and accompanied by Cal, with no explanation of how these things materialized or where Cal came from. Gaps like this tend to disrupt the storytelling for me.

One of the problems is that the credited director, James Hogan, worked mostly in B-movies and had a largely undistinguished career at Paramount. Why couldn't the studio have gotten one of their more experienced hands, like Henry Hathaway (LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER), to helm an important western like this? After all, no less a showman than Cecil B. DeMille had made the comparably budgeted western saga THE PLAINSMAN for Paramount two years earlier. To go from DeMille to Hogan in two short years demonstrates a distinct impairment of studio judgment. In any event, as another reviewer here pointed out, THE TEXANS compares most unfavorably with a later film that told a similar story, Howard Hawks' RED RIVER (1948).

This film introduced the gentle, melodic western song, "Silver on the Sage," sung in the film by Bill Roberts (as "Singin' Cy") and written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, Paramount's ace in-house songwriting team. (The pair also gave us the title song of the Hopalong Cassidy western, HILLS OF OLD WYOMING, a year earlier.) I first heard "Silver on the Sage" when it was used on the soundtrack of the 1981 drama, BUTTERFLY, the score of which was composed by Ennio Morricone. I don't remember how the song was used in the film, but the BUTTERFLY soundtrack album featured Johnny Bond's rendition of it.

Cute as a button Joan Bennett and cute as a button Randolph Scott make for a lovely early western in the aptly titled The Texans. Set in the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, it once again illustrated how wonderful it would have been if a man with a natural Southern accent had been cast in Gone With the Wind, instead of other actors who couldn't have been bothered to put one on.

This movie deals with carpetbaggers and the terrible way the South was treated after the war. If you don't like that message, rent a different movie that favors the Yankees. Joan and her tough-as-nails grandmother May Robson run an illegal route through the back country so people can bring cattle, whiskey, or other supplies through without getting taxed. Scottie joins the trail, lured in part by the money and in part by her appeal. You'll also see Walter Brennan, Robert Cummings, and Robert Barrat in supporting roles; the latter won a Hot Toasty Rag nomination for his hilarious performance.

With stiff competition in the music department, The Texans won the Rag award for its groundbreaking theme. Before 1938, western movies just used old standard tunes as the background music. Gerald Carbonara wrote a beautiful, heart-tugging theme that was the granddaddy of all the lovely western themes we know today. This movie has been forgotten through the decades, but if you like to see obscure flicks, check out this cute one. You'll definitely have enough eye candy to see you through.

Enjoyable movie. Sorry to be picky, but some continuity problems. Scott has to sell his land for a badly fitting suit to be able to leave town, even though he is wearing a gold ring. Bennet, Robson and Brennan go home, Scott rides up the same day and has a whole new buckskin outfit. Bennet and co are still wearing same clothes, where did Scott get his? Great scenes of cattle driving and river crossings. Robson is magnificent. Interesting historically to think that Bennets character thinks the French and the Mexicans can revive the South. Robert Cummings is always good, very young in this and not a lot alof screen time.

I don't know if this movie was based on a true story, but it is believable, in that it was quite likely that there were mixed loyalties after the Civil War; some wanted to continue the fight, and some that wanted to put it behind them. I've seen plenty of movies where the Confederates are portrayed as bitter sore losers. This is the first time I've seen a movie with the Rebs trying to abide by the new rules, while being persecuted at the same time. Quite believable.

This was a big budget effort for Paramount in 1938. Westerns after years of being relegated to the B picture market were just starting to come back with major player casts. This concerns the a fictional adaption of the first cattle drive from Texas to Abilene, Kansas following the Chisholm Trail. Howard Hawks did the same story a decade later with Red River only he did it far better.

Hawks in Red River contents himself with a line or two explaining the economic situation in Texas, post Civil War. Here a good quarter of the film is taken up with it. And the kind of racism expressed wouldn't fly today at all.

In the first 10 minutes of the film we see a black Union Army soldier sauntering down the street saying, "Union Army coming." with a crowd of defeated Confederates scowling. Never mind that that man had just fought for his freedom. Right after that the veterans see some of their brethren working the docks of the port of Indianola and one remarks that that wasn't the kind of job a white man should be doing. I'm sure that longshoremen everywhere got a charge out of that.

Anyway our two leads are Joan Bennett, an unreconstructed rebel who is the granddaughter of May Robson who owns a lot of cattle and land, but has no liquid assets to pay the Yankee carpetbagger taxes. She's involved in gunrunning to a group of rebels at large of whom her sweetheart Bob Cummings is one. He and his cavalry troop are going to join Maximilian in Mexico and when Max is finished putting down his rebels, they're coming back to throw out the Yankees. The other lead is Randolph Scott who is a Confederate veteran, but who realizes the war is over and we have to make a living.

His idea is to drive May Robson's cattle and sell them in Abilene where the railroad has reached. They have to sneak them out from under the nose of Robert Barrat, the local carpetbagger administrator who wants to seize them and the land for taxes imposed by the carpetbagger occupational government. That by the way sets the scene for the film's most memorable moment as May Robson drinks Robert Barrat under the table and Scott, Bennett and the rest of the hands sneak off with the herd.

After that it's the usual situations one expects from westerns involving cattle drives. They pick up Bob Cummings along the way whose troops have been annihilated by the Juaristas. Bob Cummings also tells Bennett of a new movement he's getting involved in called the Ku Klux Klan. By the end of the film with all the trials and tribulations they've gone through, guess who Bennett winds up with?

Later on this would be routine stuff for Randolph Scott. He and Bennett work well together. They get good support from Walter Brennan, Raymond Hatton, Harvey Stephens, Francis Ford, and most of all May Robson and Robert Barrat. A previous reviewer said Barrat is a buffoon and to be sure he is. Barrat is the kind of idiot that could only rise to the top in a situation like carpetbagger Texas. He probably is somebody's idiot brother-in-law and got the job through influence. That doesn't make him any less sinister. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This film is also an example of how the studios and the recording industry work hand in glove. A song called Silver on the Sage was written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger for the film. It's sung around the campfire in the usual singing cowboy tradition that was so popular back then. It's sung by Eddie Dean who later became a movie cowboy star in his own right. But Paramount just happened to have THE number one recording artist of the century under contract at the time. They persuaded Bing Crosby to record it for Decca and it enjoyed a modest sale, not one of Bing's bigger hits. But Robin and Rainger did much better that year with a song they wrote for another Paramount star for The Big Broadcast of 1938. That would be Thanks for the Memory and the film's star Bob Hope. It won the Oscar for best song that year.

Nice film, good performances, but see Red River first.