Movies I've Missed Until Now: Round-Up Time in Texas (1937)

Watching old B-Western movies on TV as a kid, I always liked Gene Autry, although to be honest I preferred Roy Rogers to Gene. But the appeal of their movies was largely the same and since many of the same writers and directors and supporting actors were involved, that’s not surprising. As a result, though, there are more of Gene’s movies that I’ve never seen, or at least don’t remember.

And I think I would remember ROUND-UP TIME IN TEXAS.

This is truly a bizarre film. It opens in Texas where it’s, well, round-up time, as Gene and the cowboys who work for him are rounding up horses on his ranch. But then Gene gets a letter from his brother Tex (Ken Cooper), who’s in Africa prospecting for diamonds. It seems that Tex has discovered a fabulously valuable diamond mine but needs horses, and since there are no horses in Africa (?), he wants Gene to hop on a ship with a herd and deliver them.

So, five minutes into the movie, Gene is off to Africa (which looks just like the Republic backlot) with his sidekick Frog Millhouse (Smiley Burnette), where they clash with crooked nightclub owner Cardigan (LeRoy Mason), meet a sultry cabaret singer (Maxine Doyle) with a mysterious agenda of her own, befriend a fast-talking, shady but likable rogue (Earle Hodgins), and set out to investigate the disappearance of Gene’s brother, who’s been framed for murdering his partner in the diamond mine, which is located in the dreaded Valley of Superstition! Considering this movie runs a little less than an hour, and there has to be time for several musical numbers, too, Oliver Drake’s script really packs in the plot. Veteran director Joseph Kane knew how to keep things racing along, though. The movie devotes too much time to silliness like Frog being chased by lions and encountering a gorilla (actually fellow B-Western star and veteran Gorilla Man Ray Corrigan), as well as teaching a bunch of native kids how to sing, but we get enough fistfights and an explosive showdown at the end to keep things interesting.

If you want to put it in pulp terms, this movie is part WILD WEST WEEKLY, part JUNGLE STORIES, and all oddball. It might be a stretch to say it’s good, but it’s persistently, unexpectedly likable. I had a good time watching it, and it’s put me in the mood to watch more of Gene’s movies. Will I actually get around to it? Who knows, but we’ll see. If I do, I’m sure I’ll write about them here.

Forgotten Books: Gene Autry and the Thief River Outlaws - Bob Hamilton

There’s a chance I read this book when I was a kid, although I don’t remember it at all, because I read a lot of the juvenile novels published by the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. This one was published in 1944, but that doesn’t matter because they stayed on the kids’ section shelves of public libraries for years. Whitman published hundreds of them, I’d say, some featuring original characters created for the line, but many of them starred popular characters from movies, radio, TV, and comic strips.

GENE AUTRY AND THE THIEF RIVER OUTLAWS is very much like one of the B-Westerns Autry made for Republic Pictures, although toned down somewhat for kids. Gene, a roving troubleshooter, is asked by a friend of a friend to investigate some sabotage plaguing the construction of a railroad bridge over Thief River Canyon. It’s the usual bit where the old-timer who owns the construction company has to complete the bridge by a certain date or else lose the lucrative contract. Gene’s investigation quickly turns up a suspect, but he has a hunch something else is going on, so he continues to dig around and winds up in danger a couple of times before everything is straightened out satisfactorily.

Overall, this is a fairly mild book, as I mentioned above. There’s one murder, but it takes place off-screen. Not much gunplay and only a couple of fistfights. But the pace moves along fairly quickly and the author at least makes an attempt to throw a few twists into the plot. He also does a good job with the colorful sidekick character, a Gabby-like old codger called Tennessee.

Dust Jacket Back

GENE AUTRY AND THE THIEF RIVER OUTLAWS was written by Bob Hamilton, whoever that was. He wrote a couple of other Gene Autry novels for Whitman, or at least they were published under that name, but that’s all I know about him. It could well be a pseudonym or house-name. But this one is competently written and entertaining in a nostalgic way. I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anybody who didn’t read these books as a kid, but if you’re an old codger like me, there’s a good chance you’d enjoy it, too.