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One of my all time favorites.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

In Hollywood Cowboy George O'Brien plays a B western star a whole lot like George O'Brien who after shooting a picture on location decides to take a camping trip with script writer and buddy Joe Caits. Though Caits is a city boy he'd like to get as far into the forest primeval as possible as he's ducking a subpoena. Somebody else has left the big city as well, one Charles Middleton whom we all know as Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon has also moved west and is establishing an old fashioned protection racket involving cattle rustling. He tries to move in on owner Maude Eburne, but she's a tough old bird. O'Brien gets involved when he saves Eburne's niece Cecilia Parker from some of Middleton's men and O'Brien also starts some moving in on his own. Nothing too terribly complex about the part, a story that's been unaccountable times in Hollywood. But O'Brien does this one with tongue firmly in cheek. It's almost like he was setting a mold for James Garner to follow in the future.I think some non-western fans will like this one.

I saw this picture under the title "Wings Over Wyoming", opening with a nod to the Franklin Roosevelt administration as newspaper headlines demand that 'Rackets Must Go'! With the heat on, mobster Doc Kramer (Charles Middleton) moves his enterprise out West, forming a racket called the Cattlemens Protective Association. If you're a Western fan, you've probably run across that name dozens of times in dozens of Westerns, although in 1937 it probably wasn't as generic as modern day fans know it today.So as common as the theme is, the picture gives it a bit of a twist with the identity of the principal player. George O'Brien portrays a 'picture actor' who's just wrapped up filming a movie, and is persuaded by film writer G. Gatsby Holmes (Joe Caits) to take some time off to go camping and fishing. Holmes' real motivation is to dodge a high profile divorce case brought by his wife, and it doesn't take much to talk Jeff Carson (O'Brien) into taking some time off.Once that's all established, it's a fairly routine good guys/bad guys story, with O'Brien's character falling for pretty Joyce Butler (Cecilia Parker), daughter of shrewd cattle rancher Violet Butler (Maude Eburn). Old Vi isn't falling for the protection racket business, even if Kramer's going rate is a penny a pound. I don't know, that sounded pretty reasonable to me, except for the fact that it was a shakedown with no value offered in return. It might have been worth it though just to have the guy get lost.The finale was a fairly inventive affair, as one of Kramer's henchmen who was about to stampede the Butler herd one more time using an old fashioned biplane became engaged in sort of a duel with a single wing aircraft enlisted by the cattlemen. It looked cool, but I didn't really see the point of it all, because there was no way they could have made contact with each other without both planes crashing. The way the film writers got around that was for the villain to run out of gas, thereby being forced to land. Meanwhile, the sheriff's posse on the ground ran down the rest of the baddies and hogtied them into submission. The best part about that was seeing the sixty two year old Butler lady lasso one of the villains, as Carson demonstrated the old 'ride off into the sunset' with the younger Miss Joyce.

This is not a great movie but it is a hoot. I mean where else can you see gangsters coming from the big city using aircraft to bomb their prey and disrupt a cattle drive. The accuracy of those ex-World War I pilots was uncanny and the secret ability of a hand grenade to blow up a dam should be exploited for modern day ordnance specialists who can only dream of such power in a small package. And all these gangsters wanted was a penny a pound to "protect" cattle from threat of non-delivery – very reasonable I would think.Silent film star George O'Brien is effective as the hero and enjoyable to watch in his role. His biography is most interesting and worthy of your time. Charles Middleton is excellent as the heavy but I still prefer him as Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials. Maude Eburne turns in another great character actor performance.The film quality of the version "Wings Over Wyoming" that I just saw on TCM was a bit grainy but the joy at watching such a unique B movie more than compensated. Some of the aviation sequences were likely lifted from other filming but what the heck, who cares. Better than most B Westerns and worth watching because it is so different.

The story has some unusual twists including Kramer, a white-collar criminal who plots to exploit a feud between cattlehands and cattlemen plus fleece cattlemen of money through a dummy Cattlemen's Protection Association.George O'Brien plays Geoffrey Carter, a Hollywood cowboy shooting a western film at Lone Pine, CA. He just happens to rescue Joyce, a cattlewoman's daughter from the city gangsters and falls for her. Then he goes to work for her mother as an anonymous cattlehand.The most interesting plot element is the use of a single-engine, dual wing biplane to frighten cattle and then a subsequent air dual with an aircraft from Hollywood flown by Carter's friend.Final roundup of the criminals has a nice twist but the ending is standard Hollywood schmaltz. There are some holes in the story never resolved. But nothing out the ordinary for a 1937 RKO Radio Picture.George O'Brien is adequate but the supporting cast never have opportunities to rise above predictable or pedestrian, which is simply a fault of the script. However, this is a 64 minute, low-budget B-western, so there was little time or reason to worry about character development. This is a rare film and not many prints exist either as Hollywood Cowboy or Wings Over Wyoming. Showcase Media of Studio City California 91604 has one, good, complete 16mm dupe print.