The big packing company starts to squeeze the small ranchers in the valley. They start legal action, including interviewing Lester Matthews, whom the company framed into prison. He'll be happy to testify. To stop him, the bad guys at the packing company send a telegram to his son, Clifford Severn, who's a student at an Eton College knock-off, to come to his father. They plan to meet him at the boat and hold him as a threat to Matthews. However, Severn decides that Gene Autry and Smiley Burnette are the guys meant to take him to his father at Rancho San Quentin. Autry and Burnette are broke rodeo performers whose manager has skipped, so they start back west with about four bucks in their pocket and a touring car they might have sold for train tickets. Along the way they meet June Storey and her sister, Mary Lee; Miss Storey has run out on her wedding, stealing the groom's car.
The script that Betty Burbridge and Bradford Ropes wrote for this may be the worst one that ever got past the editorial office at Republic Pictures. Misses Storey & Lee tell each other exactly what they have done together, and what they are both going to do. Add in the fact that young Severn does a bad Freddie Bartholomew imitation, but without Bartholomew's coarseness of manner or skill at physical slapstick, and you have something that I would have walked out of the theater on when I was six years old to walk home the four miles from the theater in heavy traffic.
Director Frank MacDonald tries to compensate by turning it into a comedy, which is theoretically a good idea. Still, the bad writings, dumb characters and poor choice of a child actor put me in such a bad mood that I could not take any pleasure in what was, I suppose, a typically decent set of songs, nor what might have been an exciting finale. Instead I wished they simply got on with it and shot everyone involved in this mess.
Other performers caught in this mishegoss include Duncan Renaldo, Smith Ballew, and Jose Eslava's Orchestra.
