Carl Pierson | Through the Shattered Lens

Someone is passing counterfeit bills on the Mexican border and the government thinks that it might be Doc Carter (Earle Hodgins), the manger of a traveling medicine show. Working undercover, Treasury agent John Wyatt (John Wayne) joins Doc Carter’s medicine show as a trick shooter. John discovers that Doc Carter is a quack and the miracle cure that he sells is 90% alcohol but that Doc Carter isn’t a counterfeiter. Instead, Doc Carter is being framed by his former partner, Curly Joe (Yakima Canutt). When John tries to tell the Mexican authorities about Curly Joe is doing, he discovers that Curly Joe has framed him as well!

This was the last of the B-programmers that John Wayne made for Monogram Pictures and it was the only one of Wayne’s films to be directed by Carl Pierson. As he did in almost all of his early B-pictures, John Wayne gives a tough but likable performance. He’s the most cheerful undercover agent that I’ve ever seen. The action scenes are rudimentary and Pierson was obviously not as creative a director as some of the other filmmakers that Wayne worked with early in his career. Carl Pierson was no Robert Bradbury. But the medicine show angle does bring a different angle to the story, with Wayne getting to show off his trick shooting skills and Earle Hodgins providing comedic relief with his miracle cure. Of course, John has a romance with pretty Linda (Marion Burns), who is Doc Carter’s daughter and who is also known as Princess Natasha.

Though it may not be one of the best of the 50 movies that John Wayne made before getting his star-making role in Stagecoach, Paradise Canyon will still be appreciated by fans of both the Duke and the simple but entertaining B-westerns of the past.

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.