Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet
Produced by Scott R. Dunlap
Screenplay by Jess Bowers (Adele Buffington)
Original Story by Oliver Drake
Director Of Photography: Harry Neumann
Film Editor: Carl Pierson
Musical Director: Edward J. Kay
Cast: Buck Jones (Marshal Buck Roberts), Tim McCoy (Marshal Tim McCall), Raymond Hatton (Marshal Sandy Hopkins), Luana Walters (Ruth Masters), Dennis Moore (Joe Brooke), Kathryn Sheldon (Aunt Miranda Masters), Tris Coffin (Steve Taggert), Horace Murphy (Bunion)
John Knight accused me of going too up-market, so I quickly finished up a Poverty Row post I’d been messing with.
Arizona Bound (1941) was the first of Monogram’s Rough Riders pictures. The series’ first eight Westerns feature Buck Jones, Tim McCoy and Raymond Hatton as retired US Marshals working undercover.
A ninth film was made without McCoy, who’d been called back into military service. That last film, Dawn On The Great Divide (1942) would be Buck Jones’ last picture — he was killed in the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston.
In this first one, The Rough Riders come to the aid of Ruth Masters (Luana Walters), who’s trying to keep her father’s stage line afloat after a string of robberies, her dad’s murder and her boyfriend being shot up. In typical B Western fashion, the big wig who runs the saloon (Tris Coffin) is behind the efforts to steal the gold shipments, destroy the stage line and frame Buck Jones for one of the robberies. Of course, The Rough Riders come through and set everything right, after doing cool things and spouting off some great dialogue.
To be honest, The Rough Riders pictures are pretty average Monogram B Westerns, elevated by the star power of Buck Jones and Tim McCoy. It’s easy to see why Jones was such a big deal. He has great presence and comes off really likable. Tim McCoy carries himself with great authority in whatever he does. In this one he poses as a gun-toting preacher, looking awesome in his black hat and long coat. Raymond Hatton gets to be the “funny one,” and he does so admirably.
Luana Walters is lovely, playing the same B Western damsel in distress you’ve seen a hundred times (and that she’d played almost as many). She had a pretty fascinating career, playing tiny parts in big pictures like A Star Is Born (1937) and DeMille’s The Buccaneer (1938) and big parts in tiny pictures like King Of Chinatown (1939) and Girls In Prison (1956). She was in all sorts of B Westerns (Autry, Elliott, Starrett, Holt, etc.), Monogram’s The Corpse Vanishes (1942) and in the first chapter of Sam Katzman’s Superman serial (1948).
The story comes from Oliver Drake, who was a master at such things, with direction from Spencer Gordon Bennet — who’d make over 100 serials, along with plenty of Westerns and four of the 16 Jungle Jim movies.
The Rough Riders series comes from the time when Hollywood was making a slew of “trio Westerns” — The Rough Riders, The Three Mesquiteers and The Range Busters. While Republic’s Mesquiteer films were certainly better made, Jones and McCoy carried these Monograms to the top of the heap. What I wouldn’t give for a nice DVD or Blu-Ray set of the entire series. In the meantime, Film Masters offers up a pretty decent copy of this one on YouTube.
50 Westerns From The 50s.