I got stuck a bit on this one for. My impression was that this film was more popular than most films in it’s time. I wanted to verify that, but there’s not a lot of history on many of these early Westerns. So my investigation dragged on, but … it has some pretty nice posters and images.
Scott looks a bit like and early Errol Flynn.
Fortunately he later turfed the ‘stache’.
This is one of 20 Zane Grey stories, filmed by Paramount in the 1930s, which they sold to Favorite Films for re-release, circa 1949-1950. The failure of Paramount, the original copyright holder, to renew the film’s copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film. (From Internet Movie Database IMDB)
Kathleen B. Burke (September 5, 1913 — April 9, 1980) was an American movie actress of the 1930’s, and former model.
Kathleen was a dental assistant in Chicago, before winning a talent contest sponsored by Paramount Pictures to play Lota the “Panther Woman” in Island of Lost Souls (1932 – You gotta pay your dues.), the first screen version of H.G. Wells’s novel The Island of Dr. Moreau. The contest allegedly had 60,000 applicants from around the country.
This led to more than a film career of 22 moves over six years, usually as the leading lady along side of Randolph Scott (Sunset Pass and Rocky Mountain Mystery), Gary Cooper,Cary Grant,Buster Crabbe, Charles Laughton, Spencer Tracy, W.C. Fields, George and Gracie Allen, Ronald Coleman, Rosalind Russell …
Her final film role was in 1938, whereupon she retired from screen acting at the age of 25 !!!
I got this notion that I would give some of the Support Cast in Sunset Pass a nod. That would be Harry Carey, Kathleen Burke, and Noah Beery Sr. (I’ll do a whole thing on Randolph Scott at a later date. That will be a huge project.)
In my usual Western ignorance I didn’t realize that Harry Carey had been a Living Legend in early Westerns and had a massive film legacy. Soooo …
Wikipedia: Harry Carey (January 16, 1878 – September 21, 1947) was an American actor and one of silent film’s earliest superstars. He is credited on Internet Movie Database (IMDB) with 267 acting credits. One of his best known performances is as the President of the Senate in the drama film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was the father of Harry Carey Jr., who was also a prominent actor. Throughout the 1920s Carey was a Western Superstar who occasionally assumed screenwriting, producing and directing assignments.
In the 1948 John Ford film, 3 Godfathers, Carey is remembered at the beginning of the film and dubbed “Bright Star of the early western sky…”
Harry Carey Jr., John Wayne, and Pedro Armendariz
John Wayne said that Harry Carey “was the greatest Western actor of all time,” and paid a tribute to him by holding his right elbow with his left hand – imitating a stance Carey himself often used in his films – in the closing shot of at the end of John Ford’s classic The Searchers (1956), when he walks away from the character played by Carey’s widow Olive, and is framed by the doorway in the final scene. According to Wayne, both he and Olive wept when the scene was finished.
In 1976, Carey was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
In 1987, his name was emblazoned along the Walk of the Western Stars on Main Street in Old Town Newhall in Santa Clarita, California. (His son, Harry Carey Jr. was also honored in 2005).
The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1919) directed by John Ford
Harry in one of his trademark poses – leaning on the saddlehorn.
Harry was the Leading Man in many early Westerns.
Remarkable photo: Early Film Crew
From Rodeo cowgirl Vera McGinnis’s photo album includes young John Ford (seated fourth from left, with cowboy hat and glasses) and Harry Carey Sr. (seated third from right). Harry Carey Jr., said the photo looked to be taken in 1917, in Placerita Canyon near Newhall, California, where the duo had filmed many of their early films. Carey Sr. and Ford made 26 silent Westerns, but only three have survived. Sadly, the rest “rotted in the cans,” Carey Jr. told True West. “Nobody bothered to even try and save ’em.”
– courtesy Jendreau family collection –
Illustration of an article in The Moving Picture World. “From left to right: Bud Osborne, rider and steer bulldogger ; Joe Rickson, champion Roman rider ; Tommy Grimes, champion bucking horse rider ; Pedro Leon, the man who can rope fifteen riders with his lariat ; Neal Hart, former Wyoming sheriff and range rider ; Harry Carey, and Bill Gillis, Texas cowpuncher and all-round rider of bucking horses and steers.”
MFW: Quite a few early Western Film Actors were real cowboys – or had ‘earned their spurs’.
Harry had a ranch.
Harry Carey / The 3 Godfathers / 1948
Only the Hero gets to kiss the gal.
Harry eventually had to step back. But he never stepped out.
