Cowboy and the Senorita

The programmer is basically a "personality" western that depends on the likability of its leads rather than lots of action. Don't expect much hard-riding or fast shooting. There is a cleverly choreographed saloon brawl showing off Roy's Tarzan skills. Unfortunately, about the only outdoor action are buckboards bouncing on a washboard road, again and again. Then too, the musical selections are nothing special, finishing up with a big production number as might be expected.

In the personality department, spunky little Mary Lee, as Chip, steals the film with her lively personality, while Roy and Dale serve up more likability in their first screen pairing. At the same time, an oafishly winning Big Boy Williams (Teddy Bear) serves up the chuckles as comedy relief. The plot's fairly standard— but for good guys Roy, Dale and Big Boy, baddie Hubbard is out to steal Chip's inheritance. So nothing special there. Anyway, the most that can be said for the 70-minutes is that it's a fairly pleasant assembly-line product. But maybe more importantly, it hints at why a youthful Roy and Dale made such a likably successful team, both on-screen and off.

A "5" on the matinée Scale.

This is a pretty standard b western. The hour just goes by even through everything has a shopworn quality-Rogers made a ton of these light pulpy westerns and this one has the charms of the form. The only thing that stands out as different is the utterly daft musical finale with the giant sombrero and enchilada man lyrics. These films are always light but this one crossed into camp for the final 10 minutes or so.

Same old villains and same old plot devices ... the villain is always ahead of the good guys because he in on the plans first hand while he sneakily plods ahead with his own scheme of defrauding the owner of the mine ... rogers finally saves the day and the young girl gets her 16th birthday present, a gold mine

This is a pretty good Roy Rogers feature, with an interesting and rather involved story, plus Dale Evans, Mary Lee, and some variety entertainment. The story has Roy and his sidekick (played this time by Big Boy Williams) befriending a young woman who is looking for a hidden mine, and trying to protect her interests from the shifty Allen, who meanwhile is working to discredit Roy. Quite a bit happens after that, and there are a lot of interesting developments even after devoting a good amount of the running time to songs and musical numbers. It works pretty well, and should satisfy any of Rogers's fans.

In a joint book about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans that I recently read, it seems as though Herbert J. Yates at Republic Pictures had the idea that Roy could use a regular female singing star, the better to boost the audiences for his number one B picture cowboy at the time. He had under contract one Frances Octavia Smith renamed Dale Evans who had done about nine films in minor roles. She was most prominent in John Wayne's In Old Oklahoma as a second female lead.

Dale was understandably reluctant to do the film. Although she was born in Uvalde, Texas her thing was not exactly country/western. She was a band singer and a good one with Anson Weeks. Her ambition was to do musical comedy, she wanted very much to do the lead in Oklahoma and later do Annie Get Your Gun. But Yates was the boss so she agreed and the rest is history.

The film they were assigned to is Cowboy and the Senorita and truth be told it's not one of the great westerns of all time. Roy and sidekick Guinn Williams get themselves involved in saving an inheritance of a gold mine from the grasp of villain John Hubbard who's about to marry Dale, the older of the two sisters. Younger sister Mary Lee has run away because she dislikes her prospective brother-in-law so much. Roy and Big Boy save the day of course.

Cowboy and the Senorita is only important in that it was the first teaming of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. They did several pictures over the next few years and eventually married after Roy's first wife Arlene Wilkins died suddenly. After that Dale only teamed with Roy occasionally until they went to television as she was busy raising Roy's kids, her son by previous marriages and their children.

Until I saw this film I never knew Guinn Williams had done any films with Roy as sidekick. The version I have is the edited one for television and I think it's a lot of his footage that was edited out. Apparently he had a rivalry going with Fuzzy Knight that looked interesting and funny and I'd certainly like to have seen more of it.

A historic landmark and it shows Herbert J. Yates apparently did have good business sense when it didn't involve his wife Vera Hruba Ralston. On the other hand he could have asked Roy to take Vera as his next leading lady.