Fay McKenzie | Through the Shattered Lens

Boss Cowboy takes place in the 30s but it’s very much a western. One car shows up and telephone poles dot the countryside but almost everyone in the movie rides a horse. The Nolans and the Rosses are two ranching families. Both families are losing cattle. Nolan foreman Dick Taylor (Buddy Roosevelt) suspects that the culprit is the Ross foreman, Jack Kearns (George Cheseboro) and he’s right. Kearns is ripping off both families. Complicating Taylor’s effort to stop Kearns are his romantic feelings towards Mary Ross (Frances Morris), who is visiting from “back east.” Sally Nolan (Fay McKenzie) is also visiting and running joke is her handing off her small dog to a ranch hand named Slim (Alan Holbrook).

No apparent relation to either Teddy or FDR, Buddy Roosevelt was a respected stunt man who tried his hand at starring in a few westerns, Unfortunately, Buddy Roosevelt wasn’t much of an actor, which is painfully apparent while watching him in Boss Cowboy. He’s fine when he’s riding a horse and pulling a gun but when he has to speak, it’s difficult to watch. As bad as Buddy Roosevelt’s acting was, he was not the worst actor in Boss Cowboy. That honor was split between Frances Morris and Fay McKenzie. Boss Cowboy is pretty dull. Every scene drags and there are plenty of awkward silences while the cast tries to remember their lines.

Though he wasn’t much of an actor, Buddy Roosevelt remained in a demand as a stunt man throughout the 40s. In the 50s and 60s, he was kept busy playing townsmen in shows like The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. In 1962, he made his final film appearance in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He then retired to Colorado, where he did at age of 75 in 1973. In all, his Hollywood career spanned 46 years, from 1916 to 1962.

In this “modern-day” western, Ken Maynard stars as Ken Baxter. While out camping in the wilderness with his trusty horse Tarzan and his two comic relief sidekicks, Pancho (Julian Rivero) and Panhandle (Ralph Peters), Ken comes across the gravely injured Professor Wahl (Michael Vallon). Wahl is an archeologist who has been left to die. Wahl is too weak to reveal who attacked him and, when Ken gets Wahl back to civilization, he discovers that Wahl’s colleagues, Dr. Flotow (William Castello) and Baron Starkoff (Sven Hugo Bard), aren’t willing to help Wahl unless he shares the location of a helium mine.

Flotow and the Baron are working for “a foreign power” and want to smuggle the helium back to Europe so that their country can use it to fuel their dirigibles. Ken and his sidekicks have to stop the bad guys from getting control of the ranch that sits near the mine. Going undercover, Ken allows himself to be hired by Joe Larkin (Charles King), who is trying to steal the property away from Letty Morgan (Fay McKenzie). Romance and gunfight follows. Ken’s horse, Tarzan, saves the day more than once.

The plot of Death Rides the Range is intriguing and, for a 55-minute programmer, complex. Unfortunately, the execution doesn’t allow the story to fulfill its potential. By the time Maynard starred in this film, the once-major cowboy star had alienated most of the major studios and he had a reputation being difficult. He was reduced to working for poverty row studios, like Colony Pictures. Maynard is a convincing hero and his horse, Tarzan, was one of the most talented of the animal actors working at that time but Death Rides The Range still feels rushed.

Death Rides The Range is mostly interesting as an example of the type of anti-German films that were being made before the U.S. officially entered World War II. The film keeps it ambiguous who Flotow and Starkoff are working for but any viewer who had been following the news out of Europe would automatically know they were working for the Germans. Even when he was making movies for Poverty Row, Ken Maynard was still fighting the good fight.