A common complaint that can be hurled at serials is the repetitiveness of most of the canon, especially in terms of plot and cliffhangers. Which is all too easy to do when watching them today, where you can put one DVD in after another. But many of us who were not around during the original theater run of these films sometimes forget that unlike today there were no reruns and people in general like the comfort of familiarity in their entertainment. Where as today we can turn on the TV and catch Timothy Hutton gloatingly reveal how the scam was really set up at the end of Leverage, or Kyra Sedgwich politely trick a suspect into trapping themselves with their own testimony on The Closer, back in the day fans went to the theater every week to see Buck Jones or Linda Stirling go through their familiar paces. Which brings us to The Oregon Trail (1939), a pedestrian western serial with an overly familiar plot but it allows fans to see Johnny Mack Brown, Fuzzy Knight and Charles Stevens playing the type of characters we have come to expect and enjoy from them.
The serial opens with Colonel Custer (Roy Barcroft !?!?!) hauling in frontier scout Jeff Scott (Johnny Mack Brown) and his sidekick Deadwood Hawkins (Fuzzy Knight). The Army wanted Jeff to look into a wave of Indian attacks on wagon trains along the Oregon Trail, which they believe is being fermented by an outside influence. Jeff had agreed only on the condition that the Army can catch him first. After having led them on a chase they are caught and put in the stockade. This turns out to be a charade to cover Jeff’s mission. After faking a jail break, the two friends head for a just departed wagon train lead by John Mason (Edward LeSaint).
Wagon Master Bull Bragg (Jack C. Smith) is actually in the pay of trading post entrepreneur Sam Morgan (James Blaine), who wants to keep settlers out of the fur rich Oregon territory, to this end he is arming the local Indians and inciting them to attack any wagon trains that enter Oregon. Along the trail Bragg sends the wagons to cross a river at the wrong spot which causes many of the wagons to upend and flounder in the deep, rushing water.
Jeff and Deadwood ride up and spot the trouble. Their expert horseman ship allows them to save most of the wagons. Unfortunately young Jimmie Clark (Bill Cody, Jr.) loses his father in the disaster and Jeff immediately takes the young boy under his wing. Jeff is also instantly smitten with Mason’s daughter Margaret (Louise Stanley)
Mason is furious with the incompetent Brag and instantly fires him, appointing Jeff Wagon Master and Deadwood as Head Scout. Bragg leaves with his men. He sends his “scout” Breed (Charles Stevens), a half breed renegade, to the nearby Indian village where he promises they will get fifty rifles from Morgan if they attack the wagon train.
The Indian braves swarm at the wagon train, which immediately forms a defensive circle. The powder wagon breaks lose with Margaret inside. Jeff rides in pursuit with several braves closely behind him. Jeff manages to snatch up Margaret before the wagon over turns. He then tries to evade their pursuers, but the braves quickly box his horse in and then herd Jeff and Margaret off a cliff…
As Johnny Mack Brown’s final serial, The Oregon Trail is an amalgam of everything his fans would want in one of his serials, a beleaguered wagon train, hostile Indian tribes, a scheming villain passing himself off as a respectable citizen, an endangered heroine to save, plus a cantankerous sidekick and an eager hero worshiping kid to form a triad of heroes with. Though not as good as Rustlers of Red Dog (1935) or Wild West Days (1937), it has enough elements in it to make it an enjoyable serial.
Most of the fifteen chapter plot covers the wagon train trying to get to Oregon, with Brown fighting off Indians, while Smith and Stevens sabotage the wagons and the trail to discredit Brown’s abilities so Smith can be reinstated as Wagon Master, and Blaine continually pops up at various forts and towns under the guise of visiting another of his many trading posts. This allows for plenty of action with Indian attacks, runaway wagons, kidnappings, shootouts and deliberately set prairie fires. Mixed into all of this are subplots showing Brown shyly romancing Stanley and the father/son bonding between Brown and Cody. Brown’s comforting of Cody over his father’s death is one of the most touching scenes attempted in the genre.
Though Brown is not afraid to show his emotions when called for, he is mostly his usual laid back and ingratiating cowboy hero, the Eric Clapton of serials. No matter the danger he will calmly jump astride his horse and head to the rescue with nary a wasted motion.
Knight compliments Brown with his irascible old time trapper sidekick. constantly grumbling, he has many humorous moments in the serial that lighten the mood and relax tension while the plot sets up the next horrendous peril for the heroes to face. He has two very funny scenes, In Chapter Four when Knight runs into an old trapper pal played by Jim Toney they immediately draw their guns and shoot each other’s hat off, then hug and laugh together. When the rest of the wagon train runs up to see what is going on, Knight grumbles, “It’s getting so a man can’t shoot at his best friend without drawing a crowd. No privacy anymore.” His other amusing scene is at the end of the serial and is one of the most unusual final shots ever done. After the villains have all been defeated, Knight looks over at Brown and Stanley in a typical serial romantic clinch. Knight muses, ‘Looks like I’m going to be the Lone Trapper from now on,” and is then shown riding along the trail alone behind the ending credit.
Bill Cody, Jr. gives a nice performance as Brown’s adopted son. A good actor he easily expresses his grief over his father’s death, gritty determination in the face danger, and boyish enthusiasm when in Brown’s presence. Cody, like Frankie Darro, was one of the few child actors who never fell back on trying to be annoyingly cute to steal scenes. He works with the other actors instead of against them and this is probably his best and most moving portrayal in serials.
Stanley seems to be just another serial heroine, someone to be put in jeopardy so she be be continually rescued. Which happens to her quite a bit, when not being grabbed by marauding Indians, she’s being snatched by Smith and Stevens. But as the serial progresses she gets to show more and more that she is not someone who screams and faints at the first sign of danger. Stanley engages in various shootouts with attacking braves and even rides out to save Brown a couple of times, and all without mussing up her ever present bonnet, very impressive.
As far as the villains go, one out of three is as good as your going to get here. I don’t know what Universal was thinking here teaming up James Blaine with Jack C. Smith. A smart and cowardly villain using a dumb and cowardly henchman doesn’t really generate much in the way of dramatic tension. As he would show in Riders of Death Valley (1941), Blaine is better suited for underhanded commerce machinations in a town setting, where they show him openly cheating his Indian customers by trading furs for guns, with the stipulation that the height of the stack of furs must equal the length of one rifle for each rifle they want, then grumbling after they leave that he needs to get longer guns. But since most of the action takes place along the frontier trail, Blaine eventually leaves town and trades in his frock coat and vest for a more rugged outfit to take a more hands on approach to the destroying of the wagon train, which doesn’t really work as Blaine is so not rugged,though he does wear a nice bushy mustache well. The only time he shows any real nasty villainy once he has left his store front is in Chapter Thirteen. Blaine stages his own kidnapping and when the plan fails, he double crosses Smith with the man still in the room. It is a funny and smart bit and I wish the serial had given Blaine more moments like it, he would have come off better.
Jack C. Smith plays an old West version of the same cowardly, inept henchman he would play in the same year’s The Phantom Creeps (1939). He is so obvious in his failed attempts to discredit Brown and sabotage the wagon train that I found it hard to believe that LeSaint would actually fire Brown and reinstate Smith in Chapter Three. Most galling is Smith’s preferred method of confrontation with Brown, he runs away. Such antics worked fine in The Phantom Creeps, where his main function was to be terrorized by Lugosi, but without that kind of strong personality to dominate him, Smith comes off at odds with the rest of the cast. Though to be fair he would have worked perfectly in a Horne serial over at Columbia.
Luckily Charles Stevens is on hand to lend the serial some decent menacing villainy. Though his character is as cowardly as the rest, it is a different style. He plays his sneaky, two faced character to perfection, easily duping both Blaine and his Indian allies with double crosses to make sure who ever comes out the winner he will be on top, while never even bothering to appear as anything but his scoundrel self to the heroes. Where Smith and even Blaine almost always choose to run away from danger, Stevens will more than likely sneak around to either shot or stab the hero in the back. Definitely someone to watch out for.
So while not the best of Brown’s serial, it does contain some entertainment value for the serial connesuer, plus you get the added bonus of seeing an early performance of Roy Barcroft playing, of all things, a heroic George Custer riding to the rescue every three or four chapters. Worth the price of admission righht there.
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