Branded a Coward (1935)

Director: SAM NEWFIELD. Screenplay: Earle Snell. Story: Richard Martinson. Photography: William Nobles. Film editor: Carl Turner. Production manager: Sam Diege. Sound recording: Erwin Jowett. Producer: A.W. Hackel.Not copyrighted by Supreme Pictures Corporation. U.S. release through William Steiner: July, 1935. 57 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Due to a traumatic experience as a youngster, a prize- winning sharpshooter is afraid of guns.COMMENT: I've often said that even the most confirmed Hollywood hack has the makings of at least one good picture in his lifetime. Witness Edward L. Cahn's Law and Order and William Beaudine's Says O'Reilly to McNab. This picture, on a much lesser scale of course, is Sam Newfield's contribution.The first requirement of any successful picture is a halfway decent script. Snell has woven four or five traditional western themes into this one (the crack shot who is afraid of guns; the murdering outlaws who capture one of two boys and raise him to follow in their footsteps; the heroine's father who has a grudge against the hero because of something his father did in the past; the outlaw who guns down one of the combatants in a street duel from a hiding place and blames the killing on the innocent aggressor; the mysterious outlaw leader who is actually revealed to be the person you least suspect; the nice heroine's trusted dad whose liking for the bottle sometimes gets the better of his discretion) but used them in an unusual way. Instead of emphasizing these clichès, he tends to brush over them, quickly moving from incident to incident and building to a splendid series of climaxes. "Branded a Coward" could justly lay claim to being the first "psychological western".One standard ingredient of the series western that we feel (at least initially) could have been dispensed with is the hero's obligatory sidekick, especially as played here by Syd Saylor. Mr. Saylor is normally a hard act to swallow, but when he puts on his stuttering turn, he's almost impossible. Nonetheless, this "comic" act does give rise to at least one really funny comeback plus one running gag that certainly rates as mildly amusing. And when the unexpected happens, it comes as a bit of a shock.Doubtless realizing that for once in his life, the script provided him a golden opportunity to make something of the "C"-grade western, Newfield has pulled out all the stops. Admittedly, half his efforts don't wholly succeed, but he certainly gets full marks for trying. The chasing-the-runaway-stage-sequence, for instance, is largely camera-captured with running inserts (normally a way-way too expensive proposition for Poverty Row). True, the inserts are some of the bumpiest we've ever encountered, but the very fact that they wobble all over the place actually adds to the excitement. And I love that thrilling moment when the stage shoots through a shallow creek! I've never seen a dramatically picturesque shot like that before in over a thousand westerns.Newfield's new-found prowess is also helped along by a fine group of support players led by legendary stuntman, Yakima Canutt, who performs his famous falling-off-the-lead-horse-and-passing-under- the-coach act right here. More thrills are provided by cult-favorite heavy, Bob Kortman, who (though uncredited) has a sizable part as one of the Cat's lead henchmen. As for the heroine, Billie Seward, she's a real sweetie, and we like Lloyd Ingraham as her surly, boozy dad. Johhny Mack Brown himself is in fine form. In addition to his usual acrobatic leaps into the saddle, he actually has a chance to act in this one — and he brings it off well.

Cowboy hero Johnny Mack Brown starred in over 200 B-movie westerns during his 38-year career in Hollywood. "Branded A Coward" ranks as one of Brown's better oaters. As Johnny Hume, he plays a cowboy who is a crack shot unless somebody else is slinging lead at him. Initially, "Thundering Gun Slingers" director Sam Neufeld's horse opera opens with a family in a covered wagon setting up camp in the wilderness when a gang of ruthless outlaws open fire on them. Johnny watches as his mother and father die from gunfire. Johnny's little brother takes a slug in the shoulder, and Johnny is so frightened that he appropriates a revolver and conceals himself in the brush while the outlaws check the bodies and gallop away. From then on, poor Johnny refuses to get tangled up in a gunfight. After he wins a rodeo championship, Johnny his celebrating his triumph in a saloon when three ruffians brandish their six-guns and try to hold up the bartender. During the confrontation, the bartender shoots one of the outlaws, but he dies at the hands of another outlaw. Meantime, Johnny cowers behind the bar in abject terror. You can see his hand trembling while the robbery occurs. He flashbacks to the past when the desperadoes killed his parents. "I'm just gun shy when guns are needed," he summarizes his predicament. "I've been thinking I would get over it, but I never will. Just when I begin to get the nerve to do something, a picture what happened on that terrible night when I was a kid pops up before me. I guess most people would call it yellow." When the truth comes out about his cowardice, Johnny leaves town. As his sidekick and he are riding to another town where nobody will know about his cowardice, he intervenes in a stagecoach hold-up. When he arrives, Johnny finds the driver wounded and the shotgun rider dead. Fearlessly, Johnny draws his six-shooter and sends the outlaws packing. Whatever cowardice that he felt before, Johnny no longer feels again. The outlaws try to steal the wagon with a passenger, Ethel Carson (Billie Seward of "Twentieth Century"), inside, but Johnny thwarts them. At one point, he leaps astride the team of horses to slow them, then drops beneath the entire coach, climbs up from the back atop the vehicle from the rear, and commandeers the coach from the road agents. Incidentally, stunt man Yakima Canutt performed this audacious stunt later in John Ford's classic western "Stagecoach" with John Wayne.Johnny's stuttering sidekick Oscar (Sid Saylor of "Six Gun Man") spreads the word around the town of Lawless that Johnny is an ideal candidate for the post of town marshal. He conjures up tall tales that Johnny dealt with both Billy the Kid and Black Bart. Johnny doesn't want to take the job despite the encouragement that he receives from the town citizens. Nevertheless, Johnny doesn't trust him. He suspects that he may turn yellow again. No sooner than this happens, Johnny gets a warning from the chief villain, nicknamed the Cat, who vows to kill him because he killed his friends. Nobody knows what the Cat looks like. All they know is the Cat is "a cruel ruthless killer."Meanwhile, Ethel's father Joe (Lloyd Ingraham of "Our Daily Bread") takes an immediate disliking to Johnny when he catches a glimpse of his six-gun with the initials T.H. on it as well as four notches. As it turns out, Johnny's father killed Carson's brother. Joe argues that Johnny's father took advantage of his position as a lawman to kill his brother. Johnny learns about an anonymous villain known only as 'the Cat' and he resolves to hunt the man down that killed his mother and father. Later, Joe challenges Johnny to a duel in the street. Johnny tries to shoot the revolver out of Joe's hand, but some desperadoes in the saloon shoot out the window and hit old Joe in the heart and kill him. Predictably, Ethel turns against him."Branded A Coward' is an unusual sagebrusher because our hero's amiable sidekick bites the dust.

"Branded a Coward" has one of the classic B Western story lines - a young boy sees his parents killed by outlaws and one day comes back to avenge the innocent. The minor twist here is that Johnny Hume (Johnny Mack Brown) really didn't plan it that way, but as one thing leads to another, well, you know.Sometimes you have to consider the era when these old time oaters were made. For 1935 this one wasn't all that bad. The leap of faith needed here is how quickly Johnny makes the transition from a 'cowering behind the bar' onlooker to full fledged Western hero when he throws down with the outlaws attacking the stagecoach in the first half. That scene offers the equally classic 'under the stagecoach' maneuver that became a trademark of many films in which Yakima Canutt appeared. Yak portrays gang leader 'Cat' as the story opens, but as things progress, hints are dropped that a new Cat mysteriously appears to take over the gang whenever it's thought the one prior has been compromised.I've only seen Syd Saylor a couple of times before and I don't recall him ever doing the stuttering gimmick. It wears after a while, but it's still a downer when he gets knocked off before the picture ends. All the while he tried getting his words out I kept thinking Porky Pig in those old Warner Brothers cartoons, and had to consider whether Saylor's bit had anything to do to inspire that character.Well you had to wonder if the finale wasn't just a bit too contrived. With the appearance of Johnny's older brother Billy, who also witnessed the death of their parents, an explanation of how he became the new 'Cat' would have been in order. Instead, you just had to take the twist ending on faith that the good brother would come out on top. But Johnny getting the girl (Billie Seward) at the end of the story - that was just par for the course.

Johnny Mack Brown is the one that is Branded A Coward in this B western produced by a Poverty Row studio called Supreme Pictures. It's not really his fault, he sustained a great emotional trauma as a child, seeing his family massacred by an outlaw only known as 'The Cat'. When he grew up he became a trick shot artist, but when it comes to gunplay with targets that shoot back, Brown can't forget.But when he and sidekick Syd Saylor spot a stagecoach holdup they take a hand in and save the gold shipment and Billie Seward. A grateful town makes him their marshal which Brown decides to accept after he hears that it was the Cat's gang that did the robbery and is operating in that area.This is one unusual B western in that it breaks one parameter of a B western which I will not tell and it has a surprise ending as to who the identity of the mysterious Cat is. I'd check this Johnny Mack Brown western out.