The Lawless Nineties (1936, directed by Joseph Kane)

Posted on April 7, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1890 and Wyoming is on the verge of voting for statehood. Newspaperman Major Carter (George “Gabby” Hayes) believes that it’s time for Wyoming to become a state and most of the locals agree with him. Businessman Charles Plummer (Harry Woods) does not want Wyoming to become a state and he’s willing to send out his main henchman, Steele (Al Bridge), to intimidate the voters and to silence Carter. Plummer has a profitable racket going and the last thing he wants is for the U.S. government to get involved in his activities. It falls to two federal agents, John Tipton (John Wayne) and Bridger (Lane Chandler), to supervise the voting and protect the citizen. When Major Carter is shot by a drunk anti-statehood activist, the mission to make Wyoming a part of the Union becomes personal.

The Lawless Nineties is typical of the B-movies that John Wayne made for Republic Pictures before John Ford resurrected his struggling career by casting him as The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach. There are plenty of gunfights and horse chases and explosions as the bad guys try to keep the townspeople from voting and the federal agents set up their own sting operation to expose Plummer’s gang. Wayne seems more relaxed here than he did in some of his other B-movies. He was obviously getting more comfortable with being on camera and playing the hero. Probably the most interesting thing about this film is that Gabby Hayes (credited as George Hayes, without his famous nickname) plays the renowned and intelligent Major Carter. Hayes was just a year away from establishing himself as a perennial B-movie sidekick and supplier comedy relief. He would soon be best-known for playing characters who had little in common with the intelligent and well-spoken Major Carter. In The Lawless Nineties, Hayes gets a chance to play something other than the comedic relief and turns out to be petty good at it.

This is another one of those westerns that will be enjoyed by fans of the genre. It’s nothing special but it does allow Wayne to show hints of his future stardom and it also gives Gabby Hayes a chance to show what he was actually capable of.

The New Frontier (1935, directed by Carl Pierson)

Posted on January 23, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

In 1889, wagon master Milt Dawson (Sam Flint) rides into a western town. He is planning on meeting his son John, who is also a wagon master. However, when a friend of Milt’s is killed by gambler Ace Holmes (Warner Richardson), Milt announces that he’s going to clean up the town and Ace is the first piece of trash that Milt is going to toss out. Ace responds by having his henchmen shoot Milt in the back.

After Milt’s death, his son finally arrives in town and you know that Ace is going to be in trouble because John Dawson is played by John Wayne! Seeking to avenge his father’s death, John teams up with an outlaw named Kit (Al Bridge) and declares war on Ace and his gang.

This is a typical western programmer, one that would probably be forgotten if not for the presence of John Wayne in an early starring role. This was before Stagecoach so the budget is low and the plot is simple. Even in his early 20s, John Wayne has the natural authority that would later make him a star but it’s still strange for me to see him in any film where he’s playing a young man who still has parents. There are some actors who you can’t picture as ever having been anything less than middle-aged and John Wayne is one of them. While most of the other actors are stiff and awkward, Wayne seems right at home in the dusty streets of The New Frontier. Interestingly, given Wayne’s identification with law-and-order, he plays a character here who has no problem working with outlaws and who understands that sometimes, the law can be unfair. Ace is the most powerful man in town and John has no choice but team up with those on the outs of what was then considered to be respectability. Another memorable scene juxtaposes a gun battle with the town’s citizens praying in church, a reminder that innocent people were often caught in the middle of the old west’s grudge matches. These are interesting themes, though they’re not very deeply explored.

Though the gunfights are nicely choreographed and shot, the chance to see a pre-stardom John Wayne clean up the old west is the main reason to watch The New Frontier.

The Fabulous Forties #43: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (dir by Preston Sturges)

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 42nd film in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties box set was a 1947 comedy called The Sin of Harold Diddlebock.

As a classic film lover, I really wish that The Sin of Harold Diddlebock was better than it actually is. The film was a collaboration between two of the biggest names in cinematic comedy history: director/writer Preston Sturges and legendary actor Harold Lloyd. In fact, this was the first film that Sturges directed after leaving the studio system so that he could make bring his unique brand of satire to life without having to deal with interference. He managed to convince Harold Lloyd to come out of retirement to star in the movie and the film even works as a quasi-sequel to one of Lloyd’s most beloved silent comedies, The Freshman. In a perfect world, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock would have been a comedy masterpiece that would have perfectly shown off the talents of both men.

Unfortunately, that’s really not the case. The Sin of Harold Diddlebock is consistently amusing but it’s never quite as funny as you want it to be. This is one of those films that sounds like it should be hilarious but, when you actually watch it, you see that the film is oddly paced and Lloyd never seems to be fully invested in his role. I suppose the natural inclination would be to blame this on interference from the notoriously eccentric Howard Hughes, who co-produced the film with Sturges. After Harold Diddlebock failed at the box office, Hughes withdrew it and spent three years personally reediting the film before re-releasing it under the title Mad Wednesday. However, by most reports, Hughes wasn’t really the problem. If Wikipedia is to be believed (and God do I hate starting any sentence with that phrase), Lloyd and Sturges did not have a good working relationship. As sad as that is, it’s also understandable. Geniuses rarely work well together.

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock does get off to a good start, seamlessly incorporating the last reel of The Freshmen with footage shot for Harold Diddlebock. (Somewhat sweetly, the film starts with a title card informing us that the what we are about to see was taken from The Freshman.) After college freshman Harold Diddlebock scores the winning touchdown in a football game, impressed advertising executive J.E. Waggleberry (Raymond Walburn) offers Harold a job. However, Harold wants to finish college so Waggleberry tells Harold to look him up in four years.

Four years later, recently graduated Harold goes to Waggleberry for a job and discovers that J.E. Waggleberry has totally forgotten him. Harold ends up working in the mailroom but is told that, as long as he is ambitious and smart, he will easily move up in the company. 22 years later, Harold is still working in the mailroom. He is secretly in love with Miss Otis (Frances Ramsden). Of course, he was also in love with each of Miss Otis’s six older sisters, all of whom worked at the company before the current Miss Otis. Harold bought an engagement ring when the oldest Otis sister was with company. Years later, he’s still carrying it with him and dreams of giving it to the current Miss Otis.

However, that might be difficult because Harold has just been fired. J.E. Waggleberry feels that Harold’s unambitious attitude is setting a bad example. As severance, Harold is given a watch and $2,946.12.

The normally quiet and reserved Harold reacts to losing his job by doing something very unusual for him. He goes to a bar and, with the help of a con man (Jimmy Conlin) and a bartender (Edgar Kennedy), he gets drunk. The bartender even creates a special drink called the Diddlebock. Harold drinks it and wakes up two days later, wearing a huge cowboy hat and owning a bankrupt circus…

And it only gets stranger from there….

While The Sin of Harold Diddlebock doesn’t quite work, I appreciated the fact that it not only created its own surreal world but that it just kept getting stranger and stranger as the film progressed. It was Harold Lloyd’s final film and there’s even a scene where he and a lion end up on the edge of a skyscraper that’s almost as good as the famous comedic set pieces from his silent classics. It’s a pity that the film doesn’t really come together but I’d still recommend seeing it just for history’s sake.