Ride 'em, Cowgirl

"Ride 'em Cowgirl" is a western that stars a woman, Dorothy Page. In the late 1930s, Page made three cowgirl movies for Grand National Pictures and this is the last of them. While having a female cowboy hero would seem to be a huge step forward for women, it was only an itty-bitty step, as the film has two huge problems. First, Page is not the only hero--and much of the time Milton Frome comes to save her! So much for a feminist message. Second, after this third film, Grand National gave up on the female western and Page soon retired from pictures.

The film begins with an odd pair arriving in the west. Oliver (Milton Frome) and Dan (Vince Barnett) are an unlikely duo. This is because Frome is NOT the standard handsome cowboy--though he plays one here. Additionally, Barnett is one of the last guys you'd expect to see in a western or fighting baddie as most of the time he was used for comic relief and played a bumbler--but not here. The pair meet up with a nice lady (Page) and her father and soon it becomes apparent that someone is trying to force them off their land. One of their tricks to do this is trying to convict her or her father of a crime they didn't commit. Can the girl or her new hero friend manage to uncover the plot and save the day?

The plot is the standard greedy baddie who wants everything plot--one of the most familiar in western movie history. The only real unusual aspect of the film is the strong-ish female lead and Barnett--who manages to play against type. Not a terrible film (though a few of the actors were pretty limp) but one that is not the strong pro-feminist sort of film folks today might have hoped would have been made back in 1939.