Riders in the Sky

Due to the success of the song "Ghost Riders in the Sky", this Gene Autry was altered just before release...adding the popular song as well as changing a few scenes to include references to Ghost Riders. It is a terrific song...one of the best country western songs of the era.

Gene and his sidekick (Pat Buttram) have decided to buy their own spread and raise cattle after Gene inherits a small fortune. So, he quits his job with the City Attorney's office and is ready to begin his new life when a friend of his is convicted of murdering a gambler. Gene knows the guys involved and believes the defendant that he killed the man in self-defense. But another local gambler (Robert Livingston) is not about to let there be a real investigation because he is deeply involved in evil and corruption. Can Gene get to the bottom of all this and make things right?

The cast for this film is very familiar. Not only do you have Autry and one of his more popular sidekicks, but the film also has appearances by Gloria Henry (the mother on the "Dennis the Menace" TV show), Alan Hale Jr. (of "Gilligan's Island"), Hank Patterson (like Buttram, of "Green Acres") and Robert Livingston. Livingston is interesting as earlier in his career he played heroes in B-westerns, such as in the Three Mesquiteers series. Here, however, he's a baddie and he did play villains in some of his later movies.

So is this any good? Well, as I already mentioned, the opening song was one of Autry's best. As for the acting and writing, the biggest weakness I noticed was Gloria Henry's character. Like too many women in B-westerns, she is inexplicably angry and argues a lot with Autry...even though he's done absolutely nothing wrong. I've seen this in too many other westerns and it is a bit of a cliché. It does, sadly, weaken the story a bit. Otherwise, it's a pretty decent western with a reasonably interesting story. If she'd been less angry, I would have scored this one a 6.

Great rendition of the title song in the opening scene. The tune did indeed take the country by storm in that long ago year. The movie's plot is more complex than usual. I understand from IMDb that a second storyline-- one to justify the title-- was added to an almost completed first one, resulting in two story threads. One involves the old man (Tom London) and the ghost rider effects; the other involves the crooked Mc Cleary and the main plot line. The screenplay itself does a pretty good job combining the two. The real Gene was never one to pass up a good business opportunity, along with his ability to spot a popular song hit when he heard it. Both are in evidence here.

Except for the "ghost rider" angle and effects, the movie is fairly standard matinée action. Gloria Henry shows a lot of spunk as good girl Anne, helping to liven up the talk. However, old movie buffs can take special pleasure in catching cult favorite Mary Beth Hughes in a patented role of brassy blonde saloon girl. And check out that hat she sports in one scene-- it's big enough to shade a whole army. Also, Alan Hale Jr., the skipper on Gilligan's Island, puts in an appearance as a marshal. But it's the title song and ghostly effects that most mark this entry as one for Autry fans to catch.

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For the most part this is a movie only of interest to Autry enthusiasts and those who like the superb title song (around which the script was presumably cobbled together). Sure enough, the song pops up twice and is easily the film's highlight on each occasion. The way that it is sung here, with emotion and zeal, and the mythic quality of its lyrics means that it transcends the B-material in which it is embedded.

The exception to boredom is the sequence in the film where the song plays out over the stark mono images of the old timer's grizzled face (as a character he dies shortly afterwards.) For an all too brief few minutes the power of the music asserts itself and the cinematography comes alive in high contrast black and white photography. The old timers' face becomes epic, stark, and deeply moving. In fact, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, I was reminded of Eisenstein's framing of facial 'types' in his Alexander Nevsky or October. So poetically powerful is this scene that it seems to have wondered in from another, more prestigious, movie (a good Western candidate being perhaps Anthony Mann's The Furies, where such stylisation abounds).

Then like a pan handler's lucky strike, the moment of glory fades and we are back to cinematic mediocrity, and a negligible, undramatic oater of most interest to hard core fans and completists.

I was never a Gene Autry fan, being a Roy Rogers fan from age 5, but of all the Autry movies, I recall this one. Tom London who plays the dying prospector tells Gene that the "Ghost Riders" are coming after him. Autry goes to the window and looks out to see the image of shadowy riders coming through the clouds. At this point, Gene sings the song. It is introduced more logically into the plot than any of his other songs. There is also a reprisal at the end of the movie. Even today, when I look up into a stormy sky, the song comes immediately to mind. It was written by Stan Jones, an ex-park ranger, who appeared in Autry's films and who also wrote another Autry hit, "Whirlwind." Tom London, who had appeared in several Republic films as Sunset Carson's sidekick, has said that this particular scene got him other parts in movies and television.

Steve Darrell is found guilty of murder and sentenced to prison, though he claims it was self-defense. County Attorney Roy Gordon's investigators, Gene Autry and Pat Buttram find out the hard way when Darrell's daughter, Gloria Henry, chucks stuff at Gene in the mistaken belief he's Gordon. Autry doesn't care. He's inherited $16,000, and he and Buttram have quit to go buy a ranch, following Miss Henry to the town where her father's ranch used to be. Now she's a real estate agent, and everything in the town is controlled by Robert Livingston. He wants Autry's money, too, but is it going to be so easy to take it?

There's some good atmosphere in this movie, even if it's shoehorned in by having Autry sing "Ghost Riders in the Sky" three times, have someone hum it, and dying Tom London talk about the legend that inspired it. Gene also sings "Streets of Laredo" and another song, but the production money is in having a chorus back Gene in the title song and running it through the reverb.

London was one of those Gower Gulch cowboys with more than 600 screen appearances to his credit, although usually it was just as a background character, often a barfly; he was a comic sidekick to Sunset Carson for a while. He died in 1963 at the age of 74.