Tag Archives: Al St. John

Knight of the Plains (1938, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Clem Peterson (Richard Cramer) has a plot to force all of the ranchers in the valley to give up their land.  He gives a phony land claim to Carson (John Merton), who presents himself as being a Mexican nobleman.  In a situation like this, you need a singing cowboy and luckily, there’s one nearby.  Fred (Fred Scott) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) get involved after their cattle are stolen by Clem and his men.  Fred not only fights to save the ranchers but he also sings a song or two.

Singing cowboy films are always strange.  Cowboys who ride horses and pull guns and get into fistfights should not also be tenors.  Fred Scott looks convincing on a horse and he has one heck of a fistfight towards the end of the movie but he’ll also start singing at the drop of a hat and it just doesn’t feel right.  John Wayne did a few singing cowboy films early in his career and he could usually pull it off.  Fred Scott wasn’t much of an actor and had a forgettable screen presence.  He had a good voice, though.

This film was produced by Stan Laurel, of Laurel and Hardy fame.  Always read those credits.  You never know who you might find.

Riders of the Desert (1932, directed by Robert N. Bradbury)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In the closing days of the frontier, a group of Rangers in New Mexico receive a telegram telling them that it is time to disband and to turn law enforcement duties over to the local sheriff.  However, there’s a viscous outlaw named Hashknife (George “Gabby” Hayes) on the loose so Bob Houston (Bob Steele) and Slim (Al St. John) pretend that they never received the telegram so that they can arrest him.  Hashknife kidnaps Bob’s girl (Gertie Messenger) and that makes thing personal.

Riders of the Desert is an appropriate name for this film because the majority of its 50-minute running time really was just taken up with footage of men riding their horses from one location to another.  Even though the film was less than an hour long, the story sill needed some filler.

Riders of the Desert is still a pretty good western, though.  It’s definitely better than the average Poverty Row western.  As always, Bob Steele look authentic riding a horse and Al St. John provides good support as Fuzzy.  The disbanding of the Rangers gives the first half of the film an elegiac feel that would later show up in several of the westerns made during and after the 1960s.  The old west is coming to an end and there’s less need for the Rangers.  The second half of the film is almost all action and George “Gabby” Hayes is a surprisingly effective villain.  Of course, this movie was made before he became Gabby.

As with most Poverty Row westerns, this is not the film to watch if you’re not already a fan of the genre.  But for those who like westerns, Riders of the Desert is a good one.

Billy The Kid In Texas (1940, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Billy the Kid (Bob Steele) escapes from a Mexican prison (where he was being held on a trumped-up charge) and ends up in Corral City, Texas with his old friend, Fuzzy Jones (Al St. John).  This version of Billy the Kid may be an outlaw but he’s a really nice outlaw.  He holds up two men who had previously held up a express wagon but he turns over the loot after he and Fuzzy are appointed the new law in Corral City.  The bad outlaws don’t want Billy the Kid or anyone else as their new sheriff so they bring in a notorious gunslinger (Carleton Young) to help them keep the town under their control but it turns out that Billy and the gunslinger have a past that no one knew about.

Bob Steele played Billy the Kid in a series of films, until Buster Crabbe took over the role in 1942.  Steele was a convincing cowboy and a convincing gunman but he wasn’t a convincing kid.  Of course, this version of Billy the Kid didn’t have much in common with the real Billy the Kid.  The movie version of Billy the Kid got into a lot of trouble but it was usually due to a misunderstanding.

Billy the Kid In Texas is definitely a Poverty Row western.  It looks cheap and it was cheap but it did feature a good fight scene between Bob Steele and Charles King and the relationship between Billy the Kid and Carleton Young’s gunslinger also added some extra dimension to the otherwise predictable story.  This film is okay for western fans who aren’t sticklers for historical accuracy.

 

Oath of Vengeance (1944, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In a small frontier town, the ranchers and the farmers are nearly at war with each other.  Cattle are being rustled.  The head of the farmers (Karl Hackett) is accused of killing a ranch hand.  Store owner Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John) suspects that it’s all a set-up and he’s not going to stand for it.  If the farmers kill all the ranchers and the ranchers kill all the farmers, there won’t be anyone left to shop at his store.  Fuzzy calls in his friend, Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe).

Buster Crabbe may have gotten his start in the westerns by playing Billy the Kid but the producers of his films eventually realized that there was only so long that Buster could play a character known as “the Kid” and Billy the Kid’s reputation as an outlaw was actually not helpful at the box office because parents didn’t want to send their kids to a matinee that might teach them the wrong lessons.  After a handful of “Billy the Kid” films, Buster’s western hero suddenly had a new name.  Billy Carson was a standard western do-gooder, called in whenever a town needed to be cleaned up or his old sidekick Fuzzy needed some help around the store.  Crabbe was a convincing hero no matter what but the Billy Carson films lacked the thing that made the Billy the Kid films interesting.  Usually, no one was trying to arrest Billy Carson.

Oath of Vengeance isn’t bad, at least not by the standards of Poverty Row westerns.  There’s plenty of fights and Crabbe, being a former Olympian, looks convincing with he throws a punch.  The plot is a pretty standard B-western plot but Crabbe’s natural likability carries the day.  Fans of the genre will be happy to see Charles King and Kermit Maynard, playing bad guys.  Frank Ellis plays the ranch hand whose murder sets off the story.  It’s always good to see the old gang back together again.

Billy The Kid Trapped (1942, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Billy “The Kid” Bonney (Buster Crabbe) and his two buddies Fuzzy (Al St. John) and Jeff (Bud McTaggart) are just trying to mind their own business and make a living in the old west but they keep getting accused of every crime that happens.  This time, they’re sentenced to hang for a crime they didn’t commit.  Luckily, a group of strangers break Billy and his friends out of jail and send them on their way to the next town.  However, the men who broke them out of jail are soon committing crimes while disguised as Billy, Fuzzy, and Jeff!  Billy teams up with Sherriff Masters (Ted Adams) to stop the imposters, who are working for Boss Jim Stanton (Glenn Strange).

One of the joys of Poverty Row westers like this one is that they always featured the same stock company.  Al St. John was everyone’s sidekick.  Ted Adams was often a sheriff.  Glenn Strange was always the criminal mastermind pulling the strings.  Milton Kibbee was always a corrupt judge or ranch owner.  George Cheseboro, Horace B. Carpenter, Jack Curtis, and Budd Buster are amongst the very familiar faces in Billy The Kid Trapped.  It gives each film a homey feel that will be appreciated by fans of the genre.  The hero of the films often changed but the stock company always remained the same.

I like the idea behind Billy The Kid Trapped but the film still feels repetitive, even though it’s less than an hour long.  After Billy captures the men who are imitating him and his friends, a crooked judge sets the men free and the immediately go back to imitating Billy.  Billy has to capture them all over again.  No wonder Billy aged so quickly!  (Buster Crabbe was in his mid-thirties when he was playing The Kid.)  The movie does have all the usual gunfights and horse chases that people watch these movies for.  It’s comforting that, no matter what, the villain is always going to turn out to be Glenn Strange.

Billy The Kid’s Smoking Guns (1942, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It’s a tale as old as time.  During the days when the west was wild, the U.S. Army is planning on setting up a new outpost near a town so the bad guys want to run all the ranchers off of their land so that they can be the ones to sell it.  Sheriff Carson (Ted Adams) is corrupt and working for the bad guys so the ranchers have to turn to Billy the Kid (Buster Crabbe) and his sidekicks, Jeff (Dave O’Brien) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) for help.  When Jeff is wounded in a fight, Fuzzy takes him to Doc Hagen (Milton Kibbee), little suspecting the doctor is actually the leader of the bad guys and using his medical practice to kill anyone who won’t give up their land!

Coming to us straight from Poverty Row, this B-western is interesting in that it seems to take a very cynical view of law enforcement.  Sheriff Carson is corrupt and Billy and his friends are running from the law themselves.  Buster Crabbe’s Billy the Kid films always kept it unclear why Billy was in trouble with the authorities.  Crabbe’s Billy the Kid always seemed to be the nicest guy in the west.  (Of course, Crabbe was also 33 and no longer seemed like he should have been known as “the Kid.”)  Eventually, the series was retconned and Buster Crabbe was no longer playing Billy the Kid but instead he was playing an upstanding citizen named Billy Carson.

Crabbe may not be a convincing outlaw but he is a convincing hero, which is all these films really required.  Billy the Kid’s Smoking Guns is a little bit interesting because of the character of Doc Hagen, whose occupation makes him a little more memorable than typical B-western bad guy.  The film is also interesting in that, for once, there’s no love interest.  Instead, it’s just men in hats shooting at each other.  That probably made the film’s youthful target audience happy.

The real-life Billy The Kid was killed when he was only 21 and after he had been an outlaw for only three years.  Buster Crabbe would g0 on to play Billy (or o some variation of Billy) until he was closing in on 40.

 

Shadows of Death (1945, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

After a railroad agent is murdered and his map of the future locations of the railroad is stolen, Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) rides into a frontier town and searches for the guilty party.  Fortunately, for Billy, his best Fuzzy Q. Jones is the mayor, the sheriff, and the town barber!  Unfortunately, local gunslinger Clay Kincaid (Eddie Hall) wants to make a name for himself by taking on the famous Billy Carson.  Corrupt businessman Landreau (Charles King) encourages Clay by lying to him and telling him that Bully is planning on stealing Clay’s girl, Babs (Dona Dax).

A standard Poverty Row western, Shadows of Death was made by the same crew and cast who were involved with most of Buster Crabbe’s Billy The Kid films.  I’m not sure if Billy Carson is meant to be the same character as Billy the Kid, though.  Billy the Kid always had bounty hunters after him but Billy Carson works for the railroad.  However, it would be strange if Fuzzy Q. Jones just happened to be the favored sidekick of two gunslingers who just happen to both be named Billy.  Along with Fuzzy’s vaudeville style comedy, one thing that audiences could always take for granted was that Charles King would play the villain in these movies and Frank Ellis would always be his henchman.  I always wonder if audiences in the 40s noticed that Charles King’s businessman and Frank Ellis’s gunslinger always returned from the dead with every B-western that came out.

My favorite scene in this one is Billy bursting into Landreau’s office, just for Landreau to say that he expects visitors to knock.  Billy pauses long enough to knock on the door before getting down to the business of frontier justice.

Cattle Stampede (1943, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Billy the Kid (Buster Crabbe), that western do-gooder who has been framed for crimes that he didn’t commit, narrowly escapes being captured by a group of bounty hunters.  To thank the man who helped him and his sidekick, Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al  St. John), escape, Billy agrees to help the man’s family make a cattle drive.  It turns out that local ranchers are being targeted by rustlers who cause the cattle to stampede and then buy up what’s left of the herd at a discount.  Even though Mary Dawson (Frances Gladwin) doesn’t trust Billy and initially suspects him of being one of the rustlers, Billy and Fuzzy take over the cattle drive and protect the family from Coulter (Glenn Strange) and Elkins (Frank Ellis).  They even prove their worth by rescuing Mary after she’s kidnapped by the villains.

This is one of the many Poverty Row westerns to feature Billy the Kid not as an outlaw but instead as a hero.  Best-known for playing Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers, Buster Crabbe was a believable hero even if he was more than a little too old to be nicknamed “the kid.”  Al St. John provides the comedic relief and veteran bad guys Charles King, Glenn Strange and Frank Ellis go through the motions as the villains, much as they did in countless other westerns of the era.  Cattle Stampede is typical of the cheap western programmers that came out of the Poverty Row studios in the 40s.  It was simplistic and predictable but featured enough western action to keep the kids in the audience entertained.  Today, its main selling point is a nostalgic one.

The Billy the Kid films are always strange because they avoid the reason why Billy is being pursued by the law and instead just present him as being another generic western hero.  It seems like a waste of a good legend.

His Private Secretary (1933, directed by Phil Whitman)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Business tycoon Mr. Wallace (Reginald Barlow) is sick and tired of his hard-drinking, hardy-partying son refusing to act in a responsible manner.  Hoping to teach Dick Wallace about the value of hard work, Mr. Wallace sends Dick to a small town with instructions to collect a debt from the local preacher (Alec B. Francis).  Dick, however, is more interested in the preacher’s daughter, Marion (Evelyn Knapp).  After Dick finally convinces Marion that he’s not as bad his reputation, they got married.  Mr. Wallace is disgusted and refuses to meet his new daughter-in-law, convinced that she’s a golddigger.  Without revealing his true identity, Marion gets a job as Mr. Wallace’s private secretary and attempts to repair the relationship between father and son.

This is a creaky romantic comedy from the early days of sound film and it would probably be forgotten if not for the fact that Dick Wallace is played by John Wayne.  Wayne was 26 when he played Dick Wallace and already a screen veteran, though most of his roles had been in B-westerns and had featured Wayne riding a horse and carrying a gun.  Wayne actually gives a pretty good performance as Dick.  He’s better and more natural here than he was in many of the singing cowboy films that he was making at the time and this film suggests an alternate timeline where Wayne become known as a romantic comedy star instead of a screen cowboy.  Wayne is especially good in the early scenes, when he’s still a no-good, hard-drinking, no-account lout.  I get the feeling he enjoyed not having to be the upright hero for once.

His Private Secretary definitely shows its age but it’s worth watching for a chance to see a young John Wayne in an unexpected role.

The Lone Rider Rides On (1941, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In the days of the wild west, Tom Cameron (George Houston) rides the range alone, seeking vengeance for the murder of his family.  They were killed when their wagon train was ambushed by the same outlaws who has previously sold them a plot of land.  Tom was a child at the time and he only remembers that the leader of the outlaws had a distinctive facial scar.  Tom Cameron is The Lone Rider.

No, not the Long Ranger.  The Lone Rider!  George Houston was an opera star who made for a surprisingly convincing gunslinger and the movie opens with him singing I Am The Lone Rider, just to make sure that it was understood that his vengeance-driven vigilante was a completely different character from that other vengeance-driven vigilante.  The Lone Rider is looking to avenge his family and, with the help of store keeper “Fuzzy” Jones (professional sidekick Al St. John), the Lone Rider does just that.  Though this is a standard B-western, the plot is a little more serious than most other B-movies.  This was the first of several Lone Rider movies and, despite the obviously low budget, there’s some emotional heft to its story.  Tom discovers that his brother (Lee Powell), who he thought had died in the attack, actually survived and joined up with the gang.  The story is about both Tom’s vengeance and his brother’s redemption.  Fans of the genre will enjoy the film’s classic western story and George Houston’s convincing performance as a gunslinger on a mission.

The Lone Rider would ride on for 16 more movies, the last one being released in 1944.  In 1942, George Houston was replaced in the lead role by Robert Livingston.  Houston went from starring in westerns to becoming one of Hollywood’s most respected vocal coaches.  (Howard Keel was one of his students.)  Shortly after the Lone Rider road for the last time, George Houston died while planning his musical comeback.  He had a heart attack and the police, thinking he was just intoxicated, tossed him in the drunk tank where he subsequently died.  He was only 48 years old.