Texas Rangers Ride Again

The romance between Jim and Ellen oozes cheese, and the Mexican servant is thrown in for laughs. Otherwise a decent story about a rustler, under investigation played by a young Anthony Quinn. The two best acted parts are Anthony Quinn and May Robson as Gran. She is very spry here at the age of 83 as the no nonsense ranch owner Mrs Dangerfield. Not as much action as When the Dalton's rode, but still entertaining enough to keep your interest. Broderick Crawford plays one of the other Rangers, and I was a bit surprised by the fact he made a couple critical errors in his raid of the plant, one man against a dozen. This western is also different as it is modern era with cars. Overall a decent watch 4/5.

The legendary lawmen known as The Texas Rangers are called in when thousands of cattle are disappearing from the White Sage Ranch owned by the Dangerfield family. An outlaw known as The Pecos Kid (John Howard) is taken on as a ranch hand, and he meets cute with the lovely young Ellen 'Slats' Dangerfield (Ellen Drew), a family member just recently returned to the old homestead.

"The Texas Rangers Ride Again" is no more and no less than lightly entertaining, fun, routine B western fare. There's not much of a story here, but there is good atmosphere, and a healthy amount of humour. There are enough genuinely funny moments - especially when The Pecos Kid pretends that he's got a gunshot wound - to make this pleasant (if forgettable) entertainment.

The cast is full of solid actors: Akim Tamiroff, Broderick Crawford, John Miljan, Anthony Quinn, Monte Blue, Donald Curtis, Charles Lane, Tom Tyler, and a young, uncredited Robert Ryan. But the show is stolen by feisty old May Robson as Ellens' live wire grandmother Cecilia and Charley Grapewin as aged Ranger Ben Caldwalder. Howard is a charming and engaging lead, and Ms. Drew is quite cute and amiable. Some of the humour derives from 'Slats' being such a tenderfoot.

These 68 minutes pass by in likable enough fashion.

Six out of 10.

Paramount has produced a neat little gem of a "B" western, worth seeing if only for a truly impressive cast, including two Oscar winners (Broderick Crawford and Anthony Quinn) and two other Oscar nominees (May Robson and Akim Tamiroff). Add in a virtual who's who of character actors including three walk-of-fame stars (Ellen Drew, John Howard and Monte Blue), Charley Grapewin (The Wizard of Oz), and Eddie Foy, Jr. (Yankee Doodle Dandy) among others, and you have lots to watch for in a relatively short picture.

Filmed on location in Arizona and set in the contemporary (for 1940) West, the usual elements of a cowboy adventure all appear: cattle rustlers and their ruthless leader, the beautiful rancher's daughter, the dominating landowner (this time, a formidable May Robson), an undercover lawman, the dishonest townsman, and a climactic shootout. And the hero gets the girl, naturally. An unusual ranch house/castle/fortress originally built to withstand Indian attack has an old dark house feel. The only real wrinkle is seeing the Texas Rangers in a modern office building, using motor vehicles (sometimes) and communicating by radio.

Well worth spending just over an hour for an afternoon's entertainment.

To its credit, Paramount Pictures has rarely stinted on funding for its lower tier films as evidenced with this work that is meant to profit from the popularity of the 1936 MacMurray/Oakie picture TEXAS RANGERS, of which this is not a sequel. Far from having a conventional Western setting, the plot here is contemporaneous with the time of the film's release, with cattle rustlers employing motor vehicles and wireless communication, as do the Rangers who also trailer their mounts to their patrol sectors. By utilizing some of its better contract players as well as a raft of supporting actors whose home studio is Paramount, a product is developed that is fairly well balanced between the common cinematic classifications of romance, comedy and adventure. As Ellen Dangerfield (Ellen Drew) arrives at the enormous White Sage Ranch in Texas after being ten years away on the east coast, her grandmother's spread is being rustled of thousands of cattle, causing the elderly lady (May Robson) to request assistance from the Texas Rangers who have a nearby base, with Ranger Jim Kingston (John Howard) being assigned to the case in an undercover capacity that allows him as a ranch hand to woo as he may wish a not unwilling Ellen. With partner Mace (Broderick Crawford), Jim pinpoints a sophisticated rustling operation led by a local meatpacking company owner and abetted by traitorous lawbreakers from among White Sage cowboys. There is abundant action as Rangers and rustlers vie for survival, yet through it all humourous episodes occur that pleasantly colour the proceedings, with city-tarnished Ellen weakly trying to find cause why she should not respond to the aggressively amourous Kingston. The mentioned components of romance, comedy and adventure are not uniformly or consistently effective, not to fault a talented cast that serves well the screenplay, including Anthony Quinn, Akim Tamiroff, Robert Ryan, supporting performers Charles Lane, Edward Pawley, Joseph Crehan, with Western genre veterans such as Tom Tyler, Monte Blue, Jack Perrin and Eddie Acuff among a host of other worthies. Robson earns acting honours with her spirited performance while notice must be made of the stuntmen, who shine in this fast moving film shot in and near Mesa, Arizona, a blessing to Archie Stout, a cinematographer whose better work is logged outdoors, while Arthur Schmidt's clean editing and the familiar thematic scoring from the 1936 movie cap a satisfactory production that also is notable for its careful attention to continuity details.

"Texas Rangers Ride Again" is a B-western from Paramount and it's surprisingly good...perhaps too good to be an inexpensive B. So why is it so good? Well, it has two huge things going for it...excellent writing and some dandy supporting actors.

The Dangerfield Ranch is huge....too huge in fact to adequately police it for cattle rustlers. On top of that, there is an inside man who knows everyone's comings and goings. So, he and a group of criminals have created a large and incredibly well organized gang. They not only steal cattle but process and destroy the carcasses right there on the Dangerfield Ranch...and use trucks to haul away the fresh meat to a packing house!

Unfortunately, finding these crooks has proven extremely difficult so the Rangers have been sent in. However, shortly after arriving, the governor dispatches them somewhere else...or so they want the crooks to think. What's next? See the film.

May Robson was a wonderful and spunky old lady in films...and here she's at the top of her game. Additionally, Charley Grapewin is also there and both play well against each other. The hero, played by Ron Randall, is possibly the weakest point in the movie, as he seems more at home in detective films instead of the west, though he's really not bad at all here. Overall, a fun western that proves B doesn't stand for bad!