Watch The Texans For Free

Better Late Then Never

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The first, by a decade, of 4 Hollywood films I'm familiar with, with a story centered around a large cattle drive northward out of Texas. The others are "Red River", "The Tall Men" and "Cowboy". They are all quite different from each other, and each is well worth a look, if you like epic westerns. This early film is typically disparaged as much the least of the 4. But after taking a look, I can say it certainly doesn't deserve this categorization. Some complain about the acting of stars Randy Scott and Joan Bennett, but I don't find anything terribly wrong. in a role tailor-made for Gary Cooper, Randy looks and acts the part well. Joan obviously is no cowgirl, but otherwise does fine. I would say this has the most complex plot and best balance of humor and drama of the 4 films, with the fresh aftermath of the Civil War playing a much more prominent part in the screenplay. We have 3 'old timers' to spearhead much of the humor: Walter Brennan, who returned to "Red River", Francis Ford: older acting and directing brother of John Ford is peg-legged 'Uncle Dud', and May Robson, as Joan's pioneer grandmother. We have busy character actor Robert Barrat playing the chief villain, Isaiah Middlebrack: an oily money-grubbing Yankee come to steal Texan land from landowners who can't pay all the new taxes on everything, including cattle. He plays it as a stereotypical gruff-voiced villain, come to prey on vulnerable women, especially. There's Robert Cummings; Scott's competitor for the affections of Joan. He's sort of the equivalent of Dunson in "Red River", pursuing the wrong choices to Scott's right choices. Through most of the film, Joan supports him, but after the failure of his venture to ally with Maximillian against the Juarez rebels in Mexico, and then his support of the new Ku Klux Klan anti-negro organization, she decides that he's a loser fanatic, and that Scott's character is a winner, with an eye for a realistic future. "Red River" provided another tall tale of the first cattle drive from deep in Texas to the new railhead in Abilene, KS. It too includes a stampede(but only one), several hostile Indian encounters, and conflicts between the principle characters. In some ways, it's more polished, but I think you will enjoy this film at least as much. The film starts out looking like it might turn into something more akin to the later Wayne-starring "The Undefeated", based on the historic attempt of General Shelby to join forces with Mexico's Maximillian, rather than surrendering to Union forces. However, Randy's persistence turned it into a "Red River" primer, instead.As in "Red River", the film cattle were nearly all Herefords, rather than the historical longhorns, which were nearly extinct, by then. The semi-wild longhorns were uniquely well adapted to do well on long drives in this climate, provided they weren't pushed too fast. Actually, before the Civil War, longer drives to California were undertaken to take advantage of high prices in the gold mining districts.The film begins with a steamboat arriving at the town of Indianola, TX. I wondered if this was a purely fictitious name, thus I checked it out. Turns out Indianola was a major seaport of the central Texas coast in this era, but was later wiped out twice by hurricanes and associated fires, thus abandoned as a ghost town. It's main competitor: Galveston, suffered a similar fate in 1900, but was rebuilt.Presently available as part of the Classic Western Round-up, volume 2 DVD set, along with "The Man from the Alamo", "California", and "The Cimarron Kid"

"The south was ruled as a conquered enemy. Northern politicians wallowed in an orgy of power--of plunder by organized mobs--of tribute and tyranny and death." This is taken from the prologue to this film. From the early 20th century until about 1960, there was a revisionist view of the Reconstruction years in which the Southerners were all portrayed as victims of evil Yankees and 'uppity' blacks! It turns out that this really is NOT what this era was like but it sure dominated films from "Birth of a Nation" (1915) through "Gallant Legion" (1948)--see David Blight and Eric Foner as well as the Nebraska Partnership for American History Education for more information about this). "The Texans" carries on this tradition of carpetbaggers (Northerners whose sole aims are to get rich and mistreat the Southerners) and scallywags (Southernerswho would betray their neighbors by working with the evil carpetbaggers).The film begins with the Yankee soldiers doing all kinds of injustices to Southerners. Randolph Scott, Walter Brennan and the other good guys are all ex-Confederate soldiers who can only look on in horror as the occupying Northern soldiers do their worst. However, Joan Bennett (sporting blonde hair as she did early in her career) and May Robson have an idea--to sell guns to their Southern friends, hide cattle from greedy Northern tax collectors and sow discord against evil Yankee oppression. While completely wrong, at least this film doesn't credit the wonderful KKK with being heroes of the post-war South (like in "Birth of a Nation"!)! During this portion of the film, oddly, Randolph Scott seems to be strangely absent from the plot. He's there but doesn't do a whole lot. Later, however, he's a little more obvious in the film and convinces a group of angry ex-Confederates to relocate to Abilene--and to get away from the repressive Yanks. After a long and arduous journey through Indian attacks and a pursuit by carpetbaggers intent on jailing the lot on trumped up charges, they arrive in Abilene at the exact perfect time. And, everyone lives happily ever after.As far as this film goes, with so many westerns like it, it didn't do a whole lot to stand out from the crowd. Heck, even Randolph Scott made at least one other film with the same plot idea ("Thunder Over the Plains"). In addition, Errol Flynn and several other actors have made similar films--it was an awfully familiar theme. While I am a huge fan of Randolph Scott westerns, this one is amazingly ordinary despite some nice scenes and acting here and there and is far from being a must-see film. If you do watch it, just don't think it's in any way a history lesson!

Randolph Scott is a former Confederate soldier and Joan Bennett plays a woman who refuses to admit when the Civil War is over in James Hogan's cattle rustling epic, which looks and feels in retrospect a lot like a B version of Howard Hawks' "Red River." There's a general lack of ambition here and the movie doesn't add up to much, just a formula picture that pretends to be somewhat more important than a singing cowboy picture.Anytime Randolph Scott is wearing more makeup in the movie than Joan Bennett, that's a sign of trouble right there. Scott annoyed me to no end in this movie, and it's hard to believe he's the same man who became such a convincing western star in the 50s and 60s. The director is partly to blame, because he's always having Scott do these clownish double takes to the camera that really do not suit him. You shouldn't ask actors to do things that they really can't do. Joan Bennett is mis-cast because she feels too contemporary. Walter Brennan basically stole the movie and made a couple good scenes out of it. I wouldn't be surprised if Hawks did see the movie and figure he could do it better. The following year after this film, Brennan made a memorable appearance in Fritz Lang's "Fury," and shortly after that he began his memorable run of character performances for Hawks. So this film might if anything be somewhat important in terms of Brennan's filmography, since he basically proves here that he's even better than Gabby Hayes.May Robson is also very amusing as "Granna", the ancient frontier woman who won't be left behind and who nurses a maternal affection for the aging Brennan character. Robert Cummings plays the rival love interest for Joan Bennett, a smarmy Confederate dead ender who dreams of leading rebel excursions from Mexico to reclaim Texas. B western regular Raymond Hatton also puts in a patented supporting performance as some kind of wilderness man to round up the rather generic but pleasant nature of the cast and film generally.Not much else to say here. Hogan's direction is pedestrian and the story is somewhat interesting but very contrived. For instance, when the uber-annoying regional bureaucrat (Robert Barrat) is murdered rather obviously in the midst of a fray by Scott's trapping buddy (Hatton), the military officer in charge (Harvey Stephens) barely bothers to investigate and suddenly switches plans and agrees to help the ranchers. It's all tied up in such a way as to soothe the frayed nerves between the Southerners and the Northerners, as if this was some piece of propaganda delayed by some 60 odd years. There's a couple shoot-outs against Indians but nothing really invested with any drama or meaning. Violence in this movie is simply action, and not very good action. Basically the movie would suffice for Saturday morning but it seems to want to be at least a bit more than that, and fails.

This was a big budget effort for Paramount in 1938. Westerns after years of being relegated to the B picture market were just starting to come back with major player casts. This concerns the a fictional adaption of the first cattle drive from Texas to Abilene, Kansas following the Chisholm Trail. Howard Hawks did the same story a decade later with Red River only he did it far better.Hawks in Red River contents himself with a line or two explaining the economic situation in Texas, post Civil War. Here a good quarter of the film is taken up with it. And the kind of racism expressed wouldn't fly today at all. In the first 10 minutes of the film we see a black Union Army soldier sauntering down the street saying, "Union Army coming." with a crowd of defeated Confederates scowling. Never mind that that man had just fought for his freedom. Right after that the veterans see some of their brethren working the docks of the port of Indianola and one remarks that that wasn't the kind of job a white man should be doing. I'm sure that longshoremen everywhere got a charge out of that.Anyway our two leads are Joan Bennett, an unreconstructed rebel who is the granddaughter of May Robson who owns a lot of cattle and land, but has no liquid assets to pay the Yankee carpetbagger taxes. She's involved in gunrunning to a group of rebels at large of whom her sweetheart Bob Cummings is one. He and his cavalry troop are going to join Maximilian in Mexico and when Max is finished putting down his rebels, they're coming back to throw out the Yankees. The other lead is Randolph Scott who is a Confederate veteran, but who realizes the war is over and we have to make a living.His idea is to drive May Robson's cattle and sell them in Abilene where the railroad has reached. They have to sneak them out from under the nose of Robert Barrat, the local carpetbagger administrator who wants to seize them and the land for taxes imposed by the carpetbagger occupational government. That by the way sets the scene for the film's most memorable moment as May Robson drinks Robert Barrat under the table and Scott, Bennett and the rest of the hands sneak off with the herd.After that it's the usual situations one expects from westerns involving cattle drives. They pick up Bob Cummings along the way whose troops have been annihilated by the Juaristas. Bob Cummings also tells Bennett of a new movement he's getting involved in called the Ku Klux Klan. By the end of the film with all the trials and tribulations they've gone through, guess who Bennett winds up with?Later on this would be routine stuff for Randolph Scott. He and Bennett work well together. They get good support from Walter Brennan, Raymond Hatton, Harvey Stephens, Francis Ford, and most of all May Robson and Robert Barrat. A previous reviewer said Barrat is a buffoon and to be sure he is. Barrat is the kind of idiot that could only rise to the top in a situation like carpetbagger Texas. He probably is somebody's idiot brother-in-law and got the job through influence. That doesn't make him any less sinister. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.This film is also an example of how the studios and the recording industry work hand in glove. A song called Silver on the Sage was written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger for the film. It's sung around the campfire in the usual singing cowboy tradition that was so popular back then. It's sung by Eddie Dean who later became a movie cowboy star in his own right. But Paramount just happened to have THE number one recording artist of the century under contract at the time. They persuaded Bing Crosby to record it for Decca and it enjoyed a modest sale, not one of Bing's bigger hits. But Robin and Rainger did much better that year with a song they wrote for another Paramount star for The Big Broadcast of 1938. That would be Thanks for the Memory and the film's star Bob Hope. It won the Oscar for best song that year.Nice film, good performances, but see Red River first.