Heroes of the Alamo

After seeing Heroes Of The Alamo I'm not surprised that John Wayne felt compelled to make his version of The Alamo on a far bigger budget than this poverty row product that ended up being owned and released by Columbia Pictures. The most well known player in this film is veteran western player Earl Hodgins who plays Stephen F. Austin.

The protagonists in this film are the Dickinsons, Almeron and Ruth Dickinson who are played by Bruce Warren and Ruth Findlay. As is part of Alamo lore, Mrs. Dickinson was in The Alamo with her husband and little girl and she and her daughter survived the attack as Santa Anna played here by Julian Rivero showed gallantry to the fair sex.

Rex Lease is Travis, Lane Chandler is Crockett, and Roger Williams is Bowie the triumvirate of commanders at the mission fort. You get absolutely no insights at all into these three men all of whom are quite different personalities in other films and in real life.

Until I came across it on Amazon rental I had never even heard of this film. What surprises me is that around this time the Texas Centennial was being celebrated and I can't believe that none of the major studios thought of doing an Alamo film back then.

As you can imagine the sets looked rickety and worn and threadbare. Production values for an epic story were just plain nil. See the John Wayne version or even the Disney version is better than this.