Todd’s Serial Blog

Still jonesing from Harrison Ford’s return to form in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), I thought I would highlight a serial with a similar aspect, mainly Buck Jones’ return to headlining a serial after almost five years out of the genre, Columbia’s remake of his earlier feature White Eagle (1941), James Horne’s most over the top serial farce.

White Eagle (Buck Jones), a pony express rider, is an Indian who has been a scout for the US Calvary, and works with his chief Running Deer (Chief Yowlachi real name Daniel Simmons) and General Randolph (Lloyd Whitlock) to work out a treaty between the Indians and the settlers at the Cold Creek Trading Post, the most important point being that no white people can enter Black Butte Pass as it is sacred to Running Deer’s people. When the treaty is complete, White Eagle, his trapper pal Grizzly (Raymond Hatton) and post manager Gardner (Edward Hearn) ride to Coyote Springs so that the Pony Express can get it to Washington to be ratified.

Along the trail they are ambushed. White Eagle has Grizzly and Gardner lay down covering fire so that he can sneak up on the ambushers and beat the stuffing out of all four. Once White Eagle is gone, the four men beat each other up while arguing about who allowed White Eagle to sneak up on them.

Arriving at Coyote Springs, White Eagle gives the treaty to Pony Express owner Dave Rand (Edmund Cobb) to go out with the next rider east to Crooked Bend. This is seen by “Dandy” Darnell (James Craven), shipping magnet. He is behind the attack on White Eagle. Knowing that Black Butte Pass has a mountain of gold under it, Darnell wants the treaty broken so that he can mine the area. He dispatches his men to attack the Pony Express rider while disguised as Indians so that the will be blamed for the attack.

White Eagle spots the ambush while riding along the trail and grabs the Pony Express horse. Getting the saddle bags off the horse, he turns it loose and lets it lead the attackers on a wild goose chase. Return to the shot rider, he finds him dead. A quick examination of the saddle bags shows a bullet lodged in the leather.

Jumping onto his horse Silver, White Eagle races to Crooked Bend, avoiding two ambushes along the way. Arriving at the Express office he meets Janet Rand (Dorothy Fay), Dave’s sister who is traveling to Coyote Springs to meet up with her brother. They are immediately attracted to each other. Traveling on the way to Crooked Bend with her is Wells Fargo Agent Monroe (Bob Card). White Eagle shows him the bullet he recovered from the attack, saying it can’t be from an Indian rifle as it is military issue. Monroe concurs and plans to take it with him to turn over to General Randolph at the fort.

White Eagle spots the horse of his last ambusher in front of the saloon. Questioning the bartender he learns it belongs to a ruffian named Rowdy (Johnny Kascier) who is playing cards with newly arrived professional gambler “Poker” Pendleton (Roy Barcroft). White Eagle demands to know why Rowdy attacked him, but all the man will say are a bunch derogatory racial epitaphs. Pendleton signals with his eyes that White Eagle is about to be jumped from behind. The former Calvary scout fights with the two back jumpers and Rowdy, mopping the floor with all three, then leaves. Pendleton throws a mug of beer in Rowdy’s face to revive him and demands his winnings from the last hand.

Grizzly runs up to White Eagle and tells him how he had overheard some men stirring up trouble, they’ve been spreading talk that Indians attacked the Express rider and now townspeople have gone to attack Running Deer’s village in retaliation. What they don’t know is that this is a ruse by Darnell to get everyone out of the way so that his men can attack the stage carrying Monroe and Janet to get back that incriminating bullet.

They race for the village but arrive too late. White Eagle goes to see his wounded chief. Running Deer wants to attack the white people for this outrage. White Eagle convinces him that it is the work of evil renegades who are trying to break the treaty. If Running Deer will keep his warriors from retaliating the village attack, White Eagle will track down the real culprits and bring them to justice. His chief reluctantly agrees.

Figuring everything seemed to start on the way to Coyote Springs, the two men head that way. Spotting the disguised renegades attacking the stage, White Eagle sends Grizzly to get help from General Randolph, while he rides to help the stage. Burning leather, he sees the stage driver get hit and fall off, leaving the vehicle running wild. Passing the renegades as if they were standing still, White Eagle leaps from Silver into the stage to save Janet, but just then the stage coach horses break free, causing the stage to overturn and crash….

This serial is a real change of pace for James Horne, no slow build up of comedy this time around, this serial starts at a frantic, over the top pace and just sustains it throughout. After a straight narration in the opening things turn silly thirty seconds later with the appearance of Raymond Hatton’s motor mouth curmudgeon and just continue on from there. Jones steps onto the screen pissed off and wearing a perpetual scowl, Craven is already bugged eyed and frothing at the mouth, and his henchmen stumble all over themselves in manic slapstick antics, tumbling in from off camera already engaged in physical comedy. White Eagle plays like a Monty Python sketch stretched to five hours.

This includes the cliffhangers, where Jones is dropped down mine shafts into raging fires at the bottom, being caught in exploding buildings, even rolled off a cliff tied to a large cable spool, and craziest of all being rolled down a hill in a barrel to avoid being shot by the bad guys and hitting a cave wall which knocks him out. He survives them all by doing absolutely nothing. Every resolution just shows Jones getting up and dusting himself off, hopping onto his horse and heading back into the fray.

Oddly enough this is mixed with some of the best action Horne ever put into a serial. There are lots of exciting chases on horse back, shoot outs, and Jones leaping into fights by dropping into the bad guys’ midst from haylofts, cliff tops and second story windows. Coupled with the comedy gives the serial a schizophrenic feel, as if the serial doesn’t know what it wants to be so it tries to be both.

An unusual aspect of the production is in the treatment of Native Americans. All through the proceedings the villains and even some of the decent town folk all bad mouth the Indians. Jones is continually shown having racially insulting comments heaped on him and him stoically taking it while his eyes harden and his voice takes on a raspy anger laced undertone. Because Jones is the hero and a Native American (at least until the final wrap up plot twist in Chapter Fifteen that comes out of no where), the audience is automatically on his side, and gives the serial the feeling of an unintentional appeal for tolerance among people of other cultures (or was it intentional? Hmmmm).

Despite the frenetic pace of the serial, the acting is all pretty good. Henchmen Al Ferguson, Jack Ingram, Charles King and Bud Osborne are all their usual dependable selves. Secondary characters like Edmund Cobb, Edward Hearn and Lloyd Whitlock play their parts completely straight giving a nice counterpoint to the henchmen’s bumbling antics.

James Craven gives his wildest performance here. Not even concerned with trying to appear innocent or sympathetic among the good guys, he treats them the same as his own henchman, being openly contemptuous of both and not afraid to say so. He gives a the villain a sense of being so confidant that he doesn’t have to pretend to be anything he isn’t, berating Cobb and Jones with the same venomous rantings he gives his own underlings, to him everyone is inferior and needs to be treated as such.

The one concession to hiding his identity he makes is pretending to be lame, so that he can walk around with a cane, which is really a gun in disguise. The thing I like about this prop is that it isn’t introduced, used and then discarded for the rest of the film, nor is it saved as gimmick to be hinted at continually before being trotted out at the end of the serial for the climactic showdown between hero and villain. Craven uses it several times throughout the serial, sometimes shooting a man about to talk, while he is concealed behind a door, or just simply taking care of a henchman who has screwed up one time too many, usually in the back as they are leaving. The only question that pops up with this is how does he keep the barrel from clogging with dirt and causing the gun to backfire as he doesn’t have a cover on it and is walking around dusty western streets all the time. Only in the movies!

Raymond Hatton is a hoot as Grizzly, constantly talking through a mouth crammed with what is probably chewing tobacco (but never mentioned of course, wouldn’t want kids to start up that habit). He slurringly mumbles his way through self promoting bragging stories and visibly unimpressed critiques of everyone and everything around him at a pace that would give the Micro Machine guy pause. He comes off like Gabby Hayes on speed.

Dorothy Fay is a bit better this time around. Unlike in The Green Archer (1940), where she did almost nothing but scream for fifteen chapters, she gets to be little gutsy this time around. Sure she still screams at the drop of a hat (what Horne heroine doesn’t?), but she also engages in a few shootouts with the bad guys. The first time so surprises them that at first they laugh at her until she shoots off one of their hats, causing them to fall all over themselves to get away.

Buck Jones is his usual, stoic, sturdy self here. Tough, fierce, and steady as a rock, he also gives the appearance a man seething with repressed anger who is just barely keeping himself in check, otherwise he would wipe out the entire town. It’s almost scary the way his face twitches whenever anyone calls him a dirty, sneaky Injun. The only time he seems relaxed is when he sighs during another of Hatton’s long winded dissertations of things he has done, appearing to be both irritated and amused with his old friend. Most heartwarming are the few times he glances shyly at Fay with a painful expression of longing only to quickly turn away embarrassed whenever she glances up at him.

Too bad everyone, and I do mean everyone, is blown off the screen by Roy Barcroft’s mysterious gambler character. He gives an assured performance as the slick Pendleton, who looks more dandified than Craven. Always skulking around, sometimes helping the good guys, sometimes the bad guys, he seems to know more about what’s going on than anyone else (his true motives, when revealed, come as no surprise in Chapter Twelve). Smooth and suave in contrast to the rest of the cast, Barcroft literally dominates every scene he’s in with his laid back, drawling performance straight from the Noah Berry, Sr. play book and makes you wonder why Republic didn’t snatch him up sooner.

Like most of Horne’s serials, it is a mixed bag, and not to everyone’s taste. But it is worth a look if for nothing more than to see Buck Jones being Buck Jones, which is always a treat.

Tags: Reviews //