This Classics Review is a Roy Rogers Western double feature- Under Western Stars and Billy the Kid Returns. These are Rogers’ first 2 starring roles. Both released in 1938, along with “Come on, Rogers!” and “Shine on Harvest Moon”. These films were designed to be features in Saturday Matinees. There would be a newsreel, an animated short, maybe a live action short or cliffhanger serial, and then a feature or two. These features would rarely run more an hour each and these two Roy Rogers movies each run just under an hour.
Under Western Stars was originally written for singing cowboy star Gene Autry but after a salary dispute, they decided to bring in a young singer/actor named Leonard Slye (sometimes known as Dick Weston) and dub him Roy Rogers. Here Roy plays...well, Roy Rogers who is helping local ranchers get a Water and Power company to release some of the water from a damn they built which cut off their water supply, in the midst of the 1930’s dust bowl. Roger ends up running for Congress with the goal of making the water company release the water and return the river to what it was, saving the residents and their livelihoods. He wins the election and falls for the water company’s president’s daughter along the way. He creates a presentation for his fellow Congressmen showing the blight of his home. Unfortunately, he has used images of other places and not of his actual part of the west. After agreeing to create legislation to help they learn that the images were misrepresented and pull out of the deal, but after some Congressmen get stuck in a sandstorm and can’t find water they agree again to help, and they all live happily ever after.
I liked this one. I’m curious how it played to theaters full of kids because it doesn’t have a lot of action. There is some but not that much. There are a few songs, and all are pretty good. My favorite being “Send My Mail to the County Jail. For being Roy Rogers’ first starring role, he does quite well. In the scene where he is presenting the dust bowl images, he does look a bit uncomfortable. Obviously not knowing what to do with his hands, but his face and delivery of his dialogue is terrific. Rogers looked great on his horse, the famous Trigger, and sounds and looks great singing the songs. He proved that this 26-year-old was ready to play the lead in films. The supporting players were good too. Smiley Burnette, who was known as sidekick to Gene Autry for some time, now supports Rogers. He’s the usual sidekick. A little overweight and silly. He tended to play a character called Frog Millhouse because he would occasionally sing some lyrics with a very low gravelly voice, as opposed to his usual tenor. Carol Hughes, who would go on to play Dale Arden in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, plays the love interest for Roy and she is cute, and delightful, with a hint of shady in there. By which I mean that, when it’s hinted that she may have betrayed Roy, you think she may very well have. Under Western Stars is not your usual western and takes place “in the present”, meaning 1938, not the “Old West”. I found the story, as simple as it is, interesting and the songs not at all distracting or annoying, as so many forced musical numbers of the time were, and being only an hour long it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. As a matter of fact, it left me wanting more.
Roy Rogers’ second lead in a film was in Billy the Kid Returns. This one is a bit more of a traditional western story. Here Rogers plays dual roles, that of Roy Rogers and Billy the Kid. As the movie opens, we meet Billy, played by Rogers, as he’s defending the homesteaders of Lincoln County from unscrupulous ranchers, but Billy is not above killing and in one instance we see Roy Rogers as Billy the Kid shoot a man to death. I was not expecting to see that. Anyway, that evening Billy’s old mentor and friend, lawman Pat Garrett catches up to him and ends up killing Billy. The next day Roy Rogers rides into Lincoln. Along the way he has helped out a man and his daughter who are making their way west to open a store and be shop keepers. He also meets a traveling musical instrument salesman (Smiley Burnette) and his band, but before he can ride off on his way to look for a job as a lawman, several ranch hands catch Roy and take him into town, thinking he is the killer Billy the Kid. He tries to convince the sheriff and the ranch hands by playing guitar and singing a song, since they said Billy couldn’t do that, but it isn’t until Pat Garrett arrives that the sheriff is convinced that the man before them is not Billy the Kid. Garrett tells the sheriff that he killed Billy the night before. The sheriff, knowing that Billy’s defending the homesteaders was the right thing, but the way he did it was wrong, and since only he, Garrett, and Rogers knows Bill is dead, asks Roy if he would pose as Billy and continue protecting the homesteaders, but without the killing. He does. There is still some confusion because now everyone must think he’s the notorious killer. Even the shopkeeper’s beautiful daughter, who Roy has eyes for. Of course, everything works out in the end.
I enjoyed this one as well. It has a lot more action than Under Western Stars, and the humor, especially that provided by Smiley Burnette, seems to work better too. The plot is more complex this time out as well. Roy seems more comfortable in front of the camera, but I think this type of story was more in his wheelhouse. It kept him mainly singing, riding, and fighting, without any dramatic monologues to deliver. The girl in this film was played by Lynne Roberts (credited as Mary Hart), who would play the girl in several more movies with Roy Rogers. Unlike the girl in Under Western Stars, she’s a much more stereotypical “girl”. As soon as she meets Roy she is in love and that is pretty much what she was given to play. Although there are a few nicely played moments where she is torn between her feelings for this man and being told he was the killer Billy the Kid. The songs are all good and, again, didn’t really hurt the story. They sometimes felt a little shoehorned into the movie, but the pair of Rogers and Smiley Burnette are so charming and entertaining that you can’t not enjoy those numbers. Now don’t try to fit this movie into the actual history of Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War, although it is true that Pat Garrett had been a friend to Billy and was the man who, in the end, killed him. This is fun fluff and I enjoyed it.
Born Leonard Slye in Cincinnati Ohio in 1911, “Roy Rogers” and his family moved to California in 1929 just in time for the Great Depression. At the suggestion of his sister Mary “Len” auditioned for a radio show and played and sang on the program. Soon after he was asked to join a music group called “The Rocky Mountaineers”. He and a couple of other band members would form their own group “The Sons of the Pioneers” and find success as recording artists and radio stars. Soon they began appearing in a few films. As I mentioned earlier Roy, as Len Slye, began appearing in supporting parts in movies and was in the right place at the right time to take over the lead role in Under Western Stars. A few years later he would fall in love with one of his co-stars, Dale Evans, and the pair, along with Trigger the Wonder Horse, would go on to make more films, a TV program and even more hit recordings. They adopted several children and became spokespersons for many charities. Roy and Dale would make television appearances throughout the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. Roy’s final film was 1977’s Macintosh and T.J. Roy Rogers passed away in 1998 of heart failure and Dale Evans followed three years later. His cultural influence was huge, and even though many young people today likely don’t know who he was, but they’ve probably heard the song Happy Trails (the band Van Halen even recorded in the 1980’s) or Tumbling Tumbleweeds. As a kid growing up in the ‘70’s I only knew him as the old singing cowboy I’d see on talk shows or guesting on TV shows. It’s only in adulthood that I looked back at his films and TV program and recognize what an impact his life had on American culture.
I watched Under Western Stars streamed on Amazon Prime. The print on there is really good. There are a few hairs in the gate and scratches here and there but otherwise looks great. It is available on DVD for $10 or less. I believe the film is in the public domain so the quality of the discs can vary widely. I watched Billy the Kid Returns on a budget DVD collection I purchased quite some time back called TV Classic Westerns: Roy Rogers. It also contains Eyes of Texas, Bells of Rosarita, Grand Canyon Trail, Heldorado, Roll on Texas Moon, Hands Across the Border, Young Bill Hickock, Under Nevada Skies, and West of the Badlands. The picture quality in this case, also due to being in Public Domain, is pretty poor. It is watchable but looks like it’s probably at least a second or third generation dub of whatever the source material was. I think it is out of print, but I’m sure it can be found for sale somewhere online.
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