You won't be disappointed!

Absolutely brilliant

A Disappointing Continuation

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

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.

John Wayne (as John Drury) saves a Devil-horse ("Duke") from execution, after the horse's murder trial. Honest. Then, Mr. Wayne ventures out to find the real killer. Wayne and "Duke" have a good screen presence. Ruth Hall (as Ruth) is suitably fetching; she was the niece of novelist Ibáñez, who had several stories adapted for Garbo and Valentino. Henry B. Walthall (as Gaunt) tries to provide some much-needed acting gravitas. The already inferior "Ride Him, Cowboy" swipes its most exciting material from Ken Maynard's silent "The Unknown Cavalier" (1926). The nicely done segments, especially the climatic ending, look like they are from the other film. *** Ride Him, Cowboy (1932) Fred Allen ~ John Wayne, Ruth Hall, Henry B. Walthall

I figured this would be a very dated, corny and dumb B-cowboy movie, but was wrong. It was a very interesting short film that was done very well.It had action, comedy, romance and suspense all packed into a movie less that lasted only 55 minutes. It had a convincing nasty villain, a pretty girl, a talented horse named "Duke," and a crooked-but-funny judge. The horse was able to untie rope and acted almost human.The only thing that looked a bit dated - but applied to all classic westerns - is when they broke chairs over the good guy's head and it never seemed to faze him. Only in the movie can a guy get punched flush in the jaw and have a wooden chair broken over his skull, and the victim is no worse for the wear!

I really liked this short movie (55 minutes on TNT), mostly because of a very young John Wayne and a lovely Ruth Hall. There are some serious flaws (like when the villain leaves Duke with John Wayne out in the desert), but overall a very enjoyable film.