Sherry Chandler » A penchant for blondes
A penchant for blondes
Just to show you how low I’ve fallen in my determination to spend this week vegging, last night I sat through local channel 62’s showing of “The Carson City Kid,” a 57-minute 1940 western starring Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes, and Noah Beery Jr. Here is the Internet Movie Database plot summary:
Roy Rogers (Roy Rogers, and not playing “himself” but playing a character named Roy Rogers), posing as The Carson City Kid, is seeking vengeance on Morgan Reynolds, the man who killed his brother. To find Reynolds in the gold towns, he systematically stops stagecoaches and goes through the mail, hoping to find letters addressed to Reynolds and thusly learn his whereabouts. Thus “The Kid” earns the reputation of a stagecoach robber, although he never takes anything…As part of his plan to get evidence against Jessup, who also does not know his true identity, Roy takes a job as saloon shotgun guard, and meets saloon singer Joby Madison (Pauline Moore, in one of the truly great performances found in the B-western genre) and falls in love with her…
This sort of Zorro plot is a little bit more complicated than that, but not much. The story line does take pains to separate Roy from Trigger before he goes under cover but one is left to wonder why anybody who rides a big blond horse and wears such fancy (clean!) duds bothers to tie a bandana over his face and speak Spanish. Even undercover, he isn’t exactly low-profile, stealing the blonde saloon singer from the major villain, singing along to player pianos in public restaurants, and casually shooting a chandelier down onto the head of a girl-offending drunk with his pistol. To perform a similar feat with a hanging rope, you may remember, Clint Eastwood needed a rifle and a considerable squint.
It was the scene with the girl and the horse that prompted my husband to remark, “He did have a penchant for blondes, didn’t he?”
Fun to see the early-ish Gabby Hayes (apparently just becoming “Gabby” here) but for me the most fun was watching Noah Beery, Jr., who at this time would have been 27 years old and he was a hunk! Although he was playing his usual naive good-natured sidekick type, in this movie he got to do some fighting and riding. In my opinion, he was better looking than Rogers – well, he was cute – and, within the limits of the character he played, he could act.
Of course, he didn’t have to be SUCH a goody two-shoes.
Possibly related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Leave a comment