The Heir to William S. Hart.

In the Australia of my childhood, the Saturday afternoon movie crowd was short-changed - at least in the urban centers where the exchanges must have thought they were dealing with sophisticated tinies. The series cowboy movies that were a signal element of the American experience hardly ever surfaced. Sure, we got (and treasured) Hoppy and (less so) Roy Rogers or the Durango Kid but their precursors, Ken Maynard, Col. Tim McCoy, Buck Jones and the rest, were all but unknown. When they surfaced in the VHS era I realised that an essential element of my cinema experience was missing. About then, I also discovered that John Ford spent his declining years peering at these, because they matched his taste, as well as being made by his old chums. 

I was reminded of that sense of having missed out when  Buck Jones' 1933 Thrill Hunter surfaced on Youtube. The remarkably sharp & clear copy got my attention straight off, looking as if it had been struck directly off an impeccable Gail Films negative, Columbia fanfare playing under their re-issue title.

Thrill Hunter is not one of the best of Buck Jones efforts. His great stone face, which is perfect at being the hard man cowboy, can’t manage the jokey compulsive liar character that Wally Beery in This Man’s Navy or Richard Dreyfus in The Big Fix nail with ease - add all the Baron Munchausens or Willy Whopper. However this one has an edge on most of the series westerns in using a half way A feature crew. Busy director George Seitz (the great silent The Vanishing American or the Andy Hardys), cameraman Ted Tetzlaff (later to direct The Window and Riff Raff/The Amazing Mr. Hammer) and editor Gene Milford  (Lost Horizon, On the Waterfront) are punching below their weight. They pounce on opportunities, like the plane buzzing a car at the rail Station, and produce a sequence that would be fine in a major production.

For the rest, the nonentities do as they are told. Revier makes a plausible movie heroine. Buck, first seen in an argument with ever typecast cook Willy Fung, who never speaks a word of English in this one, rescues her from a runaway when her unit is scouting locations for a production. (“give a horse his head. he’ll slow down pretty soon”) He’s invited to dinner with the Motion Picture People and spins them tall tales. (“You mean you flew for the Chinese?”) Riding back, he sees the end of a shootout, that leaves two quarreling bank bandits dead, and he takes credit for downing the pair.  (this plot gets re-cycled in the great 1964 Chicken episode of Gunsmoke) Buck is feted by the State Bankers Association in a nice outdoor ceremony and donates the reward money to build a swimming pool for the grateful community.

On-screen director, Ed leSaint sees him as someone to appear opposite Revier in their new picture. This moves Buck into the expected dramas. Got up in Wardrobe’s fancy braided outfit, he is ridiculed by the cowboy extras and has a fight with them. He does drive on the racing circuit (though the crash footage is library ) and begs off early from his night with Revier at the Hollywood Ritz to try to work out how to fly an airplane on a carnival gimble. These appear to be the only stunts he actually does, outside that nice rapid mount on Silver in the opening.

Our hero’s inability to manage the plane exposes his deceit and he’s sent on his way by all, including Revier, who he’s unknowingly given the locket with the map of the hiding place for the bank loot. He finds himself with hobos in an imposing-looking train but the production doesn’t get any value out of that. The writing is pretty lazy, putting him in the same rail freight car as the rest of the robbers, who make off with a car they claim has been sent to pick up Revier. Buck appropriates a dodgy plane that the owner can’t get started and takes to the sky (the impressive flying footage) in pursuit, shooting it out and surviving an OK crash before the Happy End, where he swears to give up falsehood - in vain.

Not exactly cerebral and short of the celebrity support that often prop up these - think Ward Bond, Wallace McDonald, John Wayne or Walter Brennan - but for a one hour B western, plenty OK. Jones had considerable control on some of these and it's easy to see him as the heir to William S. Hart, striking a nice balance between pulp adventure and plausibility. Me, I wish I'd found him when I was still part of his target audience.

 

Thrill Hunter - Revier, Jones, Robert Ellis, Harry Semels.


Barrie Pattison 2025.