Cowboy Rhythm / Patsy Montana / 1938
The Three Mesquiteers:
Overland Stage Raiders (1938)
1938
The Great Depression is ending.
Franklin D. Roosevelt is US President.
Hitler’s Third Reich marches into Austria.
Howard Hughes flys Round the world in 3 days.
Orson Welles’s broadcasts The War of the Worlds.
Seabiscuit beats War Admiral at Pimlico.
A gallon of Gas costs 10 cents.
Douglas Fairbanks dies.
Evel Knievel is born.
The Three Mesquiteers: Overland Stage Raiders (1938)
Consider this a review. I know these B grade Serial Westerns are often looked back on with fondness by some folks. But not by me. As an 8 year old kid watching Westerns every Saturday morning in 1956, I gotta tell ya, this is the last thing I wanted to see. They seemed to contain everything that I figured shouldn’t be in a Western: Dolled up Cowboys wearing little kerchiefs; often singing with some sappy sidekick; cars! trucks!! buses!!! airplanes???!!!!; and Ventriloquist dummies! MY GOD! What kind of Western is that!! ?? Turned my stomach. I wanted to see Rory Calhoun or Randolph Scott or Audie Murphy. Anybody but this stuff. This definitely wasn’t the Golden Era of Westerns.
Fortunately!!! this would soon be coming to a merciful end 1939 when Director John Ford Directed Stagecoach (Starring John Wayne). Ford saw that Westerns could be legitimate Art. So he did it. And created some Classics: Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, … This changed everything. Oh Yeah things still occasionally fell back in formula pulp, but there was more than enough good stuff on the way.
Next Overland Stage Raiders / Louise Brooks.
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And didn’t everyone look well laundered? No creased or filthy shirts. You’d think the first pioneers to arrive were running dry cleaners. On the other hand Overland Stage Raiders is notable for being the last picture the great Louise Brooks made.
LoL !! I was thinking the same thing, but decided to back off.
Boy! Republic sure cranked out a pile of those things.
Louise was a heck of a gal.