The Californian

A year before The Californian came out, MGM did a film about the famous bandit of early California statehood days Joaquin Murietta which starred Warner Baxter. Robin Hood Of El Dorado had a much bigger budget than this one had which was obviously an attempt by 20th Century Fox to cash in on what MGM did.

Darryl Zanuck didn't shell out any big bucks for this film which is barely an hour running time. He did use an actor past his glory days in Hollywood with Ricardo Cortez in the lead. The story begins as California has recently been taken over post the Mexican War and the natives, both grandees and peons are wondering about the new American conquerors. But Nigel DeBrulier is sending his son to Europe for a fine education befitting a Don's son. He takes leave of his son Gene Reynolds who returns years later as Ricardo Cortez

Cortez sees the people including his father crushed with onerous taxes and becomes the Robin Hood of the people. He takes over a rather bedraggled bandit gang that George Regas has and as Robin Hood Cortez makes them his Merry Men. But he won't give Katherine DeMille a tumble because he has his own Maid Marian in Marjorie Weaver. Katharine is a woman scorned and that sets up trouble.

So far this is pretty much along the story of Robin Hood Of El Dorado and Joaquin Murietta in real life. But Zanuck felt the film needed a happy ending. It sure works out better for Cortez and Weaver than it did for Murietta.

The Californian is good low budget entertainment, a kind of preliminary for 20th Century Fox who would do The Mark Of Zorro a few years later along similar lines.

Gene Reynolds is sent from happy, carefree California to Spain to grow up to be a Spanish gentleman. When he returns as Ricardo Cortez, he finds California changed, his father almost broke, because the Yankees are in charge, making up false taxes and seizing the ranchos. So he joins the bandits under George Regas, and takes over on a paying basis.

This cheap movie directed by Gus Meins looks like it's going to be Zorro, but turns into something far more standard and uninvolving. There's the typical bad guy and it all depends on getting the the incriminating documents to the honest deputatio from San Francisco. Despite a cast which includes Nigel de Brulier, Marjorie Weaver, Katherine De Mille, and Pierre Watkins, and which was distributed by 20th Century-Fox, this Sol Lesser production is strictly Poverty Row in scripting and execution.