The Old Barn Dance (1938)

The Old Barn Dance (1938), another very good Echo Bridge ex-16mm DVD, release finds Gene Autry actively promoting horses over tractors for farm use. In fact the tractor people are the villains, the cowboys who capture wild horses and auction them at inflated prices to dirt-poor homesteaders, the heroes. At least the story runs unexpectedly true-to-life, even if the script's sympathies are oddly misplaced. Gene carries on as if cowboys are just naturally salt-of-the-earth and that the use of animals as beasts-of-burden is a gift of God, while on the other hand, tractors of course are instruments of the devil. The lovely Helen Valkis and young Sammy McKim help Gene carry on with this illusion - which is not by any means the only odd and inconsistent factor in Bernard McConville's misguided script that admirably succeeds in successfully pandering to rural prejudices.

Good compact screenplay that manages to coordinate songs, action, and radio-station plot in fairly smooth fashion. Okay, so maybe a tractor can do the work of 5 horses, but can a tractor run down a bad-guy in a car by going overland. Gene shows how a horse can (before Champion). Besides, a tractor can't be stroked or nuzzle like a buddy like a horse can. Actually, the movie somewhat mirrors Depression era conditions (1938)—the farmers owe more on the tractors than they can pay, so they may lose their farms. Trouble is they're the victims of a crooked scheme that involves the unwitting Autry, who then has to make things right. I like the radio programming from behind a bale of hay—a whole new concept in broadcasting. In fact, mobile broadcasting plays an important role in the story. Of course, Frog (Burnette) gets to do his bit, and by playing a musical instrument that looks like it's from Mars. All in all, it's a good little Autry programmer, Gene's last for Republic studios, who soon hired Roy Rogers to replace him. Oh well, I still like horses best.

Like a lot of Gene Autry's pictures, this one opens with Gene on horseback, singing along with his backup musicians (this time the Colorado Hillbillies) and Smiley Burnette alongside. Though Autry always portrayed the hero in his pictures, the passage of decades since he was a major star often reveal that he was sometimes on the wrong side of progress as well. This time, Gene's a horse trader up against a new fangled contraption called a tractor, as villain Thornton's (Ivan Miller) Farming Equipment Company uses the old foreclosure scheme to call in it's loans against local farmers.For a picture that comes in under an hour, there sure are quite a few musical interludes along the way with a whole host of singing groups. Besides the Hillbillies, there's also The Stafford Sisters and a comical looking group called the Maple City Four. Personally, I got a kick out of the singer on banjo sporting the Beatles haircut some twenty five years before the Fab Four hit the scene.Storywise, Gene's put in an awkward position when his voice is broadcast on Radio KLD making it look like he's promoting the Mammoth Tractor Company. When the area farmers start to get their late payment notices, it looks like Gene had a hand in backing the crooked finance company in cahoots with Thornton. This will all get set right by the end of the story, with Gene even overlooking the fact that Miss Sally Dawson (Helen Valkis) played him for a chump, even if unknowingly.As a Western movie fan, I had to do a double take when I saw the name Dick Weston in the opening credits. Try as I might, it was difficult to pick him out in one of the singing groups, but I think I finally got a glimpse of him. Right after this picture, Republic gave him the name Roy Rogers in his very first starring role, "Under Western Stars".Say, keep your eyes peeled in an early scene for a gas pump with a Mobilgas logo and a picture of the Texaco flying horse. That was kind of cool and it hung around on screen for a while making me wonder if it was an example of early product placement in film. Another noteworthy visual occurred later on in the picture when a series of over-sized posters came into view, one of which featured another cowboy film star, Johnny Mack Brown.

Gene Autry was one of the most popular of stars in the 1930s and 1940s, in the movies,on radio, and on record. In his own way, a lot like Bing Crosby except he appealed to the folks in what now would be considered the red states.His westerns were primarily musicals and had little plot line. But I have to confess that the villain here was truly unique. Tractor salesmen who are out to takeover a lot of land when farmers put up mortgages to get tractors. Do you believe it? Gene Autry is hawking the virtue of using horses for ranch and farm work and he defeats the dastardly tractor people who have hornswoggled him to do a radio show for them.With that kind of plot, can you take this film seriously. Of course not. So just listen to the singing.By the way, the Old Barn Dance was a popular radio show at the time that featured country and western music and Gene made his start there