Ride Him, Cowboy (1932)

During the 1931/1932 movie release season, Columbia Pictures had Buck Jones under contract to do a series of Westerns. During the same period, they also signed up a young John Wayne, perhaps to groom for future leading roles. However with the signing of yet another Western hero, Tim McCoy, Wayne became expendable after appearing in three films that featured Jones and McCoy.So Wayne was picked up by Leon Schlesinger over at Warners, resulting in a series of six films; "Ride Him, Cowboy" was the first. Long after seeing all sixteen of Wayne's Lone Star Westerns (1933 to 1935) he made right after the Warners gig, I've been diligently seeking them out, and lo and behold, all six appeared on the Turner Classic Movie Channel this past week, aired in the order of their original release. Sometimes the movie gods smile down favorably.The film opens with Wayne galloping into view atop his horse 'Duke', perhaps not as dramatic an entrance as he made in the opener for "Stagecoach", but impressive nonetheless. What's interesting is that the picture serves as the origin story for Wayne's horse, who appeared in all six of the Warners sagebrush yarns and released as 'Four Star Westerns'. In the story, Duke is put on trial! for being a menace to the community of Cattlelow in Healer Valley, Maricopa County. The film's captioning stated the town's name as 'Catalog', but I use another reviewer's description since it seems to make more sense.Duke, who's owned by the Gaunt's (Henry B. Walthall and Ruth Hall), is saved by harmonica playing John Drury (Wayne) after successfully staying on board the bucking Duke to prove that the horse is manageable. That scene of Drury taming down Duke was handled using stock footage from an earlier Ken Maynard film atop his horse Tarzan. Duke himself, a white horse, was selected because of his resemblance to Tarzan for just such an eventuality. One more note of interest - Duke appeared to have some sort of brand or mark on his left hindquarter, and depending on the camera angle, the mark looked like 'A1' or '/H', a little difficult to tell, although in the follow up picture, "The Big Stampede", it definitely looks more like 'A1'.Duke proved invaluable in the later going when it became necessary to save his new master from dying in the desert after the villain Hawk (Frank Hagney) tricked Drury into giving up his gun. Duke managed to uproot the tree he was tied to and undid the rope securing Drury so he could bring the Hawk and the rest of his rustling gang to justice. Before that though, Drury had to stand trial for a raid on the Gordon Ranch, having been implicated by his harmonica placed at the scene by Henry Sims, the Hawk. A newspaper headline touting 'Dewey Captures Manila' in the office of Judge 'Necktie' Jones (Otis Harlan), places the date of this story some time after May 1st, 1898.Riding hard to make the save, because Duke couldn't actually speak, one of the few things he wasn't capable of, Ruth Gaunt arrived just in time after outwitting a trio of Hawk's henchmen. In a story made credible only by the standards of these early B Westerns, Drury and his gal Ruth close things out with a kiss, establishing a tradition that would carry through the remaining Four Star Westerns as well as the Lone Star films to follow.Addendum**** 6-7-2016 - Doing a little research on 'Duke', you can see a pretty good screen capture of the brand noted in my review here at: http://www.b-westerns.com/hoss-jwayne.htm. Apparently it's a combination of the letters AH as one can see from the picture.

This movie starts with a horse named Duke coming to the rescue of a man being bushwhacked. The man is cracked over the head and killed, so one of the robbers claims the horse went mad and attacked them. So the horse is put on trial for murder. I'm not kidding -- the horse is brought to town and put on trial in front of the whole town! Before he's sentenced to death, a cowboy (John Wayne) shows up and offers to ride the horse to prove he's not wild. After he does and saves Duke, the horse's owner (great character actor Henry B. Walthall) asks Wayne to help the town catch a masked bandit named the Hawk. The first of six B westerns Wayne made for WB in the early '30s. He was named John something-or-other in every movie and always had his horse Duke. They're routine westerns. Forgettable but watchable.

Director Fred Allen's "Ride Him, Cowboy," a remake of the 1926 Warner Brothers' Ken Maynard western "The Unknown," toplined John Wayne in his first oater for the Burbank company as a harmonica playing hero out to break up a ring of range thieves terrorizing ranches. Essentially, "Ride Him, Cowboy" was a B-movie sagebrusher where the star's horse shows more sense than most of the characters and behaves like a resourceful canine rather than a skittish mount. Aside from a cowboy orchestra strumming a tune, "Ride Him, Cowboy" contains no orchestral soundtrack, but this western boasts better than average production values and looks more expensive than Wayne's later Lone Star westerns that he made after Jack Warner turned him loose some five westerns later. Indeed, this is John Wayne at age 25 looking skinny and rawboned as an upstanding, romantic lead. Predictable from fade-in to fade-out, "Ride Him, Cowboy" is nothing distinguished, but director-turned-editor Fred Allen makes interesting use of dolly shots and there is an interesting point-of-view shot of the sun boiling down on our hero when he is tied to a tree in the desert."Ride Him, Cowboy" opens during one dark, rainy evening as the notorious outlaw 'the Hawk' (Frank Nagney of "The General") a.k.a. Henry Sims and his henchmen attack the Gaunt ranch to steal money. A fierce horse storms up and drives the henchmen away. Jim Gaunt (Henry B. Walthall of "Judge Priest") and his granddaughter Ruth (Ruth Hall of "Monkey Business") check into the disturbance and find one of their ranch hands, Bob Webb, unconscious and in pretty bad shape. Gaunt is surprised to see Sims on his property. Sims explains he just happened to be riding along when he heard the fracas. Sims argues that the horse tried to kill Webb and ought to be destroyed. Meanwhile, the doctor thinks that Webb will pull through without harm, but the ranch hand remains in a coma for three days.The next day in the frontier town of Cattlelow in Maricopa County around the year 1900, Judge Bartlett (Charles Sellon of "Baby Face") convenes court to decide whether to destroy Duke or let the horse live. Sims offers compelling testimony against the horse and Duke rears up at Sims. Ruth rushes to Duke's defense and pleads with the judge not to destroy a horse as gentle as he is. About that time, wandering cowpoke John Drury, late of the Tumblin' Ace Ranch in Texas, rides into Cattlelow on his horse 'Buddy' playing a harmonica without a care in the world. When Drury leans about the impending demise of Duke, he intervenes and persuades Judge Bartlett to let Duke live if he can ride the ornery horse. Sims makes a one-hundred dollar wager with Gaunt that Drury cannot stay aboard Duke and loses. Ruth and Gaunt are overjoyed that Drury saves Duke and a bystander observes that Drury would be a great addition to the vigilantes in their fight against the Hawk. Gaunt invites Drury to their meeting after our hero says that he loves excitement and gives Ruth a loving eye.At the vigilante meeting, Drury suggests that the best way to handle the Hawk is for one man to tackle the villain. Drury learns that nobody knows what the Hawk looks like, except the man has ridden roughshod over the county for years now. John Gaunt persuades Sims to escort Drury into the Hawk's bailiwick. One of the best dolly shots in "Ride Him, Cowboy" occurs during this scene when Allen dollies out from a close-up of Sims to show the entire with several western characters seated around a table. The deputy, Clout (Henry Gribbon of "Yankee Doodle in Berlin"), provides top-notch comic relief as a clowning blow-hard coward. Later that evening at the Gaunt ranch, John and Ruth get to know each other and Ruth insists that John take Duke when he leaves to track down the Hawk. At the same time, Duke trots up and strips the saddle off Drury's horse Buddy. Drury rides off on Duke and meets Sims the following day at Eagle Pass. They ride into the desert and take a breather where Drury explains that his revolver is a 38 caliber gun in a .45 caliber frame dampen the recoil. They compare their ability to make difficult shots look easy and Sims tries out Drury's six-gun and gets the drop on our hero. He ties Drury to a tree while Duke restlessly pulls at his own reins after Drury has knotted them to nearby tree.The Hawk gathers his men, attacks a ranch, and kills the son of the owner and wife. Burning down the buildings, he frames Drury for the crime by leaving Drury's harmonica at the scene. Sims informs Ruth that Drury left him without a word in the night and hasn't been seen since he rode off. The vigilantes and the sheriff catch up to Drury. The only reason that Drury didn't die from exposure of the sun is that Duke pulled himself loose from the tree and untied Drury's bonds with his teeth. The authorities take Drury to a nearby abandoned town where Judge E. Clarence 'Necktie' Jones (Otis Harlan of "Dr. Socrates") convenes a hearing and pretty much railroads Drury into a noose based on Sims' testimony. Meanwhile, Webb recovers from his coma and informs Ruth that it was Sims as the Hawk who attacked their ranch. Ruth mounts up and rides like the devil to save Drury's life. Along the way, she runs into the Hawk's henchmen and fools them into following her to 'Necktie' Jones' courtroom. Ruth arrives in the nick of time to save Drury from an inevitable hanging.Clocking in at a lean, mean 55 minutes, "Ride Him, Cowboy" moves at a brisk pace and never bogs down. Producer Leon Schlesinger is the same individual who supervised the Warner Brothers' cartoons with Bugs Bunny and company.

This film was the first of a series of B westerns that John Wayne did for Warner Brothers and it was decided to give him a horse companion named Duke. Duke the horse was fine, the film left a lot to be desired.A horse is the only witness to a robbery where another witness was beaten unconscious and lies in a coma. He went after the villain and the villain who is masked bandit known as the Hawk says the horse is a mankiller who attacked him for no good reason. Since by day the villain is a respectable town citizen everyone believes him, almost.One of the almost is young cowpoke John Wayne who says he can tame the stallion and proceeds to do so. He even offers to track down the Hawk.It starts to get a little ridiculous here especially in the way that the villain gets the drop on Wayne. Of course in the tradition of Trigger, Champion, Topper, and Robert Taylor's horse Varick in Knights of the Round Table, Duke rescues his friend John Wayne. Doesn't that sound a little odd.Otis Harlan has a very funny bit as the country judge before whom Wayne is tried when he's accused of being the Hawk. And the villain does get a poetic ending.Still it's hardly one of John Wayne's best.