Weak
Tim Holt’s Westerns for RKO were quite
fun. Most were juvenile programmers and as such hardly great art but they had a
certain zip about them. Holt had a youthful appearance and a winning smile (as
he and his partner Chito run a stageline in Arizona we must assume that the
film’s title applies to him). His first appearance in an RKO Western was as the
Tonto Kid in The Law West of Tombstone
(in which he was second billed after Harry Carey). His first RKO Western lead
was as the Fargo Kid in the movie of the same name in 1940. One look at his
boyish face will tell you why he got ‘kid’ roles. All through the 1940s the
entertaining (if innocuous) Westerns came thick and fast.
Tim Holt
Occasionally he did a more serious film:
he worked twice for John Ford, as the young cavalry lieutenant in Stagecoach in 1939 and as Virgil Earp in
My Darling Clementine in 1946. Most notably
he showed that he could really act in a serious picture when he was Curtin, one
of the gold seekers, for John Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in 1948. But he will be mostly remembered for
his black & white hour-long second-feature oaters, especially those in
which his sidekick was Chito Jose Gonzalez Bustamante Rafferty (Richard
Martin), the amorous swain who, however, runs a mile whenever matrimony looms.
And indeed, these Westerns are fun.
It probably satisfied the juvenile audience in '49
Sadly, though, Stagecoach Kid was one of the weakest of them. It followed the same
plotline as usual, i.e. Tim and Chito foil a skullduggerous plot with much
gallopin’ and shootin’, but it seemed to lack the usual get up and go. This may
be because the director was Lew Landers. Usually Holt had Edward Killy or
Lesley Selander at the helm, both more than competent, but Landers hadn’t got
the same ability. He was one of those directors known for churning out
programmers on time and on budget without much interest in whether they were
any good.
You'd be better off with another in the series
Stagecoach
Kid was quite unusual in that at the end Tim got
the girl. He didn’t usually. Chito flirted with them but Tim remained chaste.
But in the last reel of this one he has Jessie on his arm and married bliss
beckons. Jessie was played by Jeff Donnell, who, unlike me, took her first name
from 50% of the duo with Mutt in the cartoon strip. Apparently she was besotted
with the characters. She specialized in tomboy or bobbysoxer parts and indeed,
in Stagecoach Kid she dresses up as a
boy (most unconvincingly) and calls herself Jesse James. All the cowpokes
around are fooled by the rambunctious youth (they must have been seriously
dumb) and it gives Tim the chance to spank her, daringly, which Hollywood
loved. Later, though, she is unmasked and changes back to a dress and rides
sidesaddle.
A myopic Tim with 'Jesse'
Her dad is a rich businessman from San
Francisco (Thurston Hall) who has brought his daughter out to Arizona to a
ranch he owns to get her away from an unsuitable suitor. She is a spoiled brat.
However, crooked ranch foreman Thatcher (reliable heavy Joe Sawyer) and his
henchmen Parnell and Clint (Robert Williams and Robert Bray) have taken over
the hacienda and drunk all the whiskey and smoked all the cigars, not to
mention sold off the cattle. They want to kill the owner before he arrives and
discovers the naughtiness but the henchmen are singularly incompetent and every
attempt fails (mostly foiled by Tim & Chito).
Tim and Chito nab a villain
Kenneth MacDonald is the sheriff and
Harry Harvey is the clerk of the stageline, so that’s all good. The music is by
Paul Sawtell so that’s OK too. But honestly, I wouldn’t bother. Try Guns of Hate instead. Or better still, Rustlers - that one has a derringer in a cake.
No comments:
Post a Comment