Chuck Morrison | Through the Shattered Lens

In the days of the Old West, Griff Atkins (Stanley Blystone) manages a Pony Express station but, because of his gambling debts, he actually encourages the Indians and the outlaw Richard brothers (John Rockwell and Ray Teal) to attack the Pony Express riders and steal their horses. Major Goodwin (Tom Chatterton) tries to put a stop to all this by firing Griff and putting Cal Sheridan (Johnny Mack Brown) in charge. Griff and the Richard brothers continue their outlaw ways and eventually, the head of one of the relay stations is killed in one of their raids. While the dead man’s daughter, Norma (Nell O’Day), investigates the murder, Cal works to bring peace the line and falls in love with Goodwin’s daughter, Alice (Dorothy Short). Meanwhile, aspiring Pony Express rider Shorty (Fuzzy Knight) tries to invent a trampoline system that will help him to mount a horse.

No matter how bad things get in the west, you can always count on Johnny Mack Brown to bring some order and to get it done in less than an hour. Johnny Mack Brown was always a good hero and that’s the case here. Eventually this film has all of the horse riding and tough fighting that fans of the genre expect from these westerns but, for a short movie (it only runs for 59 minutes), it still seems to take a while for it to really get going. The first half of the movie is more about Fuzzy Knight singing songs and trying to become a rider than it is about anything else. I usually enjoy Fuzzy’s antics but, like the B-western themselves, they are definitely an acquired taste for most viewers.

In this B-western, Johnny Mack Brown plays Chip Bennett, the foreman of the Flying U Ranch. The ranch is owned by J.G. Whitmore (Forrest Taylor) and his daughter (Doris Weston), who has just returned from college and who has eyes for Dusty (Bob Baker), a singing ranchhand.

Ed Duncan (Anthony Warde) and his gang are in the arms smuggling business. To make their business a success, they need access to the ranch, which sits on the shore of a lake. Knowing that Chip would never let them take over, Duncan tries to frame Chip for a bank robbery and murder. Chip responds by kidnapping two of Duncan’s men, leading to a final and explosive shootout.

Chip of the Flying U is a western that doesn’t seem to know what era it’s supposed to be taking place in. Chip, Duncan, and all of the other ranch hands dress like they’re in the late 1800s. Doris Weston dresses like she’s just stepped out of a 1930s photoshoot. Duncan is trying to smuggle hand grenades, which were invented in 1908 but not commonly used until World War I. The movie’s time period is all over the place but that was frequently the case with the B-westerns of the 30s. Shot on studio backlots and for a very low budget, these films were not concerned with historical accuracy. Instead, they were about shootouts and a few songs. Chip of the Flying U offers up both, along with Fuzzy Knight as the comedic sidekick who turns out to be very good with a rifle.

With lots of horse chases and bloodless shoot-outs and not too much romance, this movie may seem creaky by today’s standards but probably thrilled the kids who caught while spending an afternoon at the movies in 1939. Today, the appeal of movies like this is that the good guys are unquestionably good and the bad guys are unquestionably bad. They remind us of a simpler time that may have never existed but we all hope it did.