Mack V. Wright | Through the Shattered Lens

After stagecoach rodeo racer John Bishop is framed for causing a competitor to have an accident, he’s hauled off to jail. Fortunately, Bishop’s boss, Bob Leadly (Henry B. Walthall), comes through for Bishop and helps him escape from the jail. To thank Bob, Bishop heads down to Mexico to search for Bob’s son, Bart (Paul Fix). The last that Bob heard, Bart was running with an outlaw gang called “The Brotherhood of Death.” The only way get out of the Brotherhood of Death is to die.

By an amazing coincidence both Bart and Bishop’s girlfriend, Mary (Shirley Palmer), are in the Mexican town of Sonora. To try to get Bart to return home, Bishop goes undercover and infiltrates the gang. Once inside, Bishop discovers that gang leader Monte Black (J.P. McGowan) is planning on robbing the silver mine that belongs to Mary’s father.

This is a John Wayne B-western, typical of the poverty row productions that he was making before John Ford cast him as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach and made him into a star. This one features the usual horse chases and bar fights and John Wayne gives a solid-enough performance in the lead role. The most interesting thing about it is that, even though it’s a western, it’s set in modern times. I guess frontier days lasted longer in some parts of the county than in others.

John Wayne’s horse, Duke, appears in this picture and shows again that he was the most talented of all the horse actors in the 30s. He earned his co-starring credit.

When the invention of the telegraph puts the Pony Express out of business, two veteran riders — John Blair (John Wayne) and Larry Adams (Lane Chandler) — decide to start their own stagecoach line. The richest man in Buchanan City, “Honest” Cal Drake (Douglas Cosgrove), sells them the line to nearby Crescent City. Though initially grateful, Blair and Larry soon discover that Crescent City is now a ghost town that serves as home to exactly two inhabitants. Rather than give up, Blair and Larry set up their stagecoach and they suddenly get lucky as settlers start to find themselves in Crescent City. Blair is even able to convince the local telegraph company to run the wire though Crescent City, which leads to an influx of even more people. Now, Blair just needs to land the contract delivering mail for the area. To do that, he’ll have to win a stagecoach race against Drake, who turns out to not be very honest at all.

Winds of the Wastelands is one of John Wayne’s better pre-Stagecoach programmers. While it has the western action that most people would expect from a B-western, it also has a lot more comedy than some of Wayne’s other poverty row productions. For instance, a skunk tries to turn the stagecoach into his home and, of course, shows up at a key moment during the big race. When one of bad guys tries to convince Blair to take his donkey to Crescent City in the stagecoach, Blair asks if there are any other “jackasses” who want a ride while casting a look at Drake’s men. The movie takes a more serious turn when Drake goes to extreme methods to try to stop Blair and, as a result, Larry is wounded in a gunfight. Doc Forsythe (Sam Flint), the founder of Crescent City, has to rediscover his confidence to perform the operation that can save Larry’s life. Fortunately, the doctor’s daughter (Phyllis Fraser) is there to both help him out and to fall in love with John Blair.

This 55-minute programmer featured John Wayne playing the type of character for which he best known, the level-headed westerner who wasn’t going to let anyone push him around but who still fought fair. Watching this movie, it’s easy to see why, just three years later, John Ford used him in Stagecoach.