Todd’s Serial Blog

I have an odd problem sometimes.  When I read something in an autobiography, I tend to agree to certain opinions about individuals discussed in the book without taking the time to actually explore the other side of the story.  This was especially true of William Witney’s autobiography.  I had tended to avoid both King of the Royal Mounted (1940) and The Adventures of Red Ryder (1940), due to the negative attitude Witney had concerning Allan Lane and especially Don Barry, who he constantly referred to as The Midget.   The turning point for me was an interview I had read in a magazine with Witney (don’t ask which one, I can’t really remember) and was surprised by the nasty remarks he made about Robert Conrad when he worked on The Wild Wild West, which is one of my all time favorite shows (only Conrad could wear a skin tight royal purple bolero suit and still look like the toughest guy in the room).  Why all the negativity?

After thinking about it I began to realize that Witney was trained as an old school film maker, where the director calls all of the shots, period (to quote Christopher Walken in the Cowbell Sketch on SNL, “Never question me!”).  Lane, Barry and Conrad represented a new breed of actor, ones who felt they had a right to have their own opinions heard on how their characters should be played.  Of course they could also have been self centered prima donnas, I can’t really say having never met any of them personally.  But to get back to my original point, once I decided not to take Witney’s assessments of the actors as having to do with their actual acting abilities, I decided to seek out Barry’s highly regarded serial debut to make up my own mind about him.

The serial opens with Mesquite, Texas  banker Calvin Drake (Harry Worth)  learning that the Santa Fe Railroad plans to build a line through several ranches near the town.  Hoping to secure the land for himself before news of the approaching railroad reaches Mesquite, Drake hires saloon owner Ace Hanlon (Noah Berry, Sr.) to run the ranchers off their land so that he can pick it up cheap and then sell it to the railroad at an exorbitant price.  Hanlon puts together a gang led by eye patch wearing outlaw One Eye (Bob Kortman) and begin running off cattle and burning down farm houses in a reign of terror.

Rancher Red Ryder (Don “Red” Barry) comes upon One Eye attacking a neighboring ranch and drives them off with his unrivaled marksmanship.  After the battle, Red finds that the only survivor is a small boy.  Taking him back to the Ryder home, Red’s aunt The Duchess (Maude Pierce Allen) takes charge of the orphan.  Discussing the situation with his father, Colonel Tom Ryder (William Farnum), they come to the conclusion that with the local law unable to handle the situation, they will have to organize a protective association among the remaining ranchers.

Heading into town, Red goes to get supplies while the Colonel goes to see Sheriff Andrews (Lloyd Ingraham) to work out the details of the association.  News of what the Ryder’s are planing spreads quickly through the town and Ace sends Shark (Ray Teal) and two men to take care of the situation.  They enter the jail and gun  down both Colonel Ryder and the Sheriff, then leave.  Red returns to pick up his father and is horrified at what he discovers.  He finds Sheriff Andrews’ daughter Beth (Vivian Coe) hiding in a back room.  She witnessed everything and tells Red who the killers are.

Red storms into Hanlon’s saloon and demands everyone but the three killers to leave.  Once alone, he challenges them to shoot it out, which they do.  Once the smoke clears, Red and Shark are the only ones standing.  The arrival of Deputy Dade (Carleton Young) and Deputy Lawson (Gene Alsace) puts an end to any further gun play.  Dade is ready to arrest Red for murder until he is told that Beth witnessed Shark and his men kill her and Red’s fathers.  Dade takes Shark into custody.

Dade is actually in the employ of Hanlon, who sends back plans for Shark’s jailbreak.  The jailbreak goes off with almost no hitch, except that Beth spots Shark.  She is grabbed and thrown into the stage  Shark plans to head for the Mexican border in.   Young Indian Little Beaver (Tommy Cook) also sees this and rushes to tell Red, who heads off in pursuit of the stage.  Red manages to catch up to the stage by cutting cross country.  He boards the stage and starts fighting with the driver.  During the scuffle, the horses break free, leaving the stage rolling wild.  The stage, with everyone aboard, rolls onto a dilapidated bridge which doesn’t reach across the entire span to the other side, and plunge off into a roaring river hundreds of feet below…..

Based on the popular Fred Harmon comic strip, Adventures of Red Ryder is one of Republic’s best serials, made during the peak time of  what many fans consider the Golden Age of serials, and led to an entire series of feature films for the company, mostly staring another serial superstar Gordon “Wild Bill” Elliott.  It contains some of the genre’s best action sequences, most notably a fight around a water tower rigged to explode in Chapter Four, a high speed stage coach race in Chapter Six and the full bore shoot out, chase and fist fight that climaxes the final chapter.  An interesting aspect of the serial is the way music is used.  Composer Cy Feuer cleverly incorporates the melody of Old Susanna into many of the action scenes as well as the main titles, making it Red’s unofficial theme song, which uniquely suits the character the way the William Tell Overture suited The Lone Ranger. As Western action goes, this serial is great and it is easy to see why it is such a fan favorite.

The acting is all pretty good.  Don “Red” Barry gives a star making performance that shows why he was immediately catapulted to feature films after this serial.  It is a multi-layered performance with many subtle nuiances.  The look of disbelief, shock and sadness he displays at finding his father murdered quickly turns to a cold, murderous determination as he literally stalks across town to the saloon and retribution.  My favorite scene is in Chapter Six when he is held prisoner.  Discovered to have been secretly trying to cut his ropes with a sharp nail sticking out of the chair he is tied to, Barry gives a quick bemused smile as if to say, “Oh well, I tried” before switching back to tough guy mode.  Barry does over due the tough guy pose a little too much at times, snapping out dialogue between clenched teeth and scowling alot, I’ve always gotten the impression that he took the comparison to James Cagney a little too much to heart.

I guess I should talk a little about his height, since Witney made such a big deal about it in his book.  In looking at the film, Barry seems to be of average height, around five nine or ten, not the towering figure of the six foot four comic strip character, but not the dimuative shrimp Witney makes him out to be.  The problem is the extra wide brim hat and large chaps Barry wears, which from a logical stand point make sense for a cattle rancher to wear since he would be spending a large amount of time in the saddle everyday, but for some reason they look a little too big on Barry causing him to appear smaller than he really is.  I have also wondered if part of the animosity on Witney’s part might not stem from people on the set cracking jokes about Barry’s appearance and the actor not handling it too well, causing on set problems between both parties.  Any one who remembers high school knows that teasing is just a part of life and you either learn to take it with a laugh or find yourself ostrazied, and I suspect Barry didn’t laugh.

Tommy Cook is a good compliment to Barry as the Indian child who hero worships Red Ryder.  Always following Barry around, he comes off as an enthusiastic helper instead of annoying.  I especially like a scene in Chapter Four where Cook not so casually brings up how good the apples are at the general store and convinces Barry that they should probably have some.  It is a well played scene that conveys a real father and son relationship between the two.

Hal Taliaferro is also good as Red’s gung ho side kick Cherokee, who doesn’t get introduced till Chapter Two.    It’s a nice contrasted performance where Taliaferro effects a laid back easy going drawl yet his only reaction to every emergency is to suggest they either shoot someone or at least kick them around a little.  His directness is endeering and when he gets gunned down in Chapter Eleven, his death in Red’s arms is every bit as tear inducing as a similar scene at the end of Dick Tracy (1937).

Vivian Coe and Maude Pierce Allen do not fair as well as the male good guys.  Coe seems to spend her entire screen time looking concerned.  Even worst is the fact that she disappears from the serial after the end of the stage coach race in Chapter Seven and doesn’t reappear until the final scene wrap up in Chapter Twelve.  Allen is treated a little better as the indomitable and feisty Duchess, sharing many scenes with Barry as he sits at the ranch house kitchen table planning their next move to counter the bad guys schemes.  She also gets a showy scene in Chapter Nine where she stalls for time so that Red can get to town with money to pay off a loan they had on the ranch.  Her disgusted sneer when she growls at the clerk getting ready to foreclose “Going to hold me to the exact second ain’t ya!” is great and makes you wish she had more to do in the serial.

Harry Worth’s prissy main villain is a bit of a disappointment for me.  He does well in the scenes where he is manipulating the heroes with his constant references to new banking regulations preventing him from stopping foreclosures and forcing the heroes to scramble for money to pay off their loans, while he then  sets up his men to steal whatever they manage to scrape together.  But when he starts angrily berating Berry, the only one who actually knows he’s the real brains behind the gang, it just doesn’t work for me.  In the last chapter Worth threatens Berry with a gun declaring, “You’re a bungler, I don’t like bunglers” there is no menace in the scene, and I waited in disappointment for Berry to take the gun away and snap Worth in half with one hand.  I also had trouble believing Worth was capable of going toe to toe with Barry in the final slug fest.

Berry, of course, is great as always.  He is his usual jovial, back slapping two faced villain.  Always able to talk his way out of any tense situation with his boundless charisma, he also uses his size to advantage to threateningly stare down a few less than devoted henchmen.  I would have much preferred him being the main villain to Worth.  A knock down drag out fight between him and the smaller Barry would have been interesting as the husky villain would have added some uncertainty to whether of not the hero could win the battle.

Carleton Young does a nice twist on the usual crooked sheriff cliche.  Here he starts out as a crooked deputy who then gets appointed sheriff after the honest one is murdered.  A great scene is in Chapter Five when he complains that he can’t keep having Hanlon’s men escape from jail because people will start to get suspicious.  This becomes ironic after Red is framed for murder in Chapter Seven and then escapes from custody twice.

The real standout among the villains is Bob Kortman as the meaner than a snake One Eye.  With his angular, boney face and snarling delivery he comes off as a sagebrush Boris Karloff.  For most of the serial he is a nasty and heartless bad guy who would think nothing of gunning down an unarmed man in the back.  This changes in the last chapter when Red forces him into a shootout for killing Cherokee.  Kortman quakes with fear and pleads that it was an accident, doing anything he can think of to get out of a quick draw with the better gunman.  His quiet resignation to the fact he is going to die right before he draws is an effective and subtle bit of acting that steals the scene from Barry’s more emotional performance.

So if, like me, you have not given Adventures of Red Ryder a try due to reading Witney’s book, I say don’t let one man’s opinion of the main actor disuade you from viewing a great piece of serial film making.  It is also an ironic serial, for despite Witney’s personal feelings, he was always enough of a professional to still do his best to make a good product for the studio. And that is something to always admire.

Tags: Reviews //