Hollywood Cowboy (1937)

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

"Hollywood Cowboy" is also listed at YouTube as "Wings over Wyoming," and you can find it under either or both titles. But if you look, I'm afraid you won't find a very good print.Which is a shame. I might have given it a 10 if I could have seen it in one piece, without the dark picture, without the breaks and pops and jumps, and without the hiss on the sound track.It has a crackerjack cast, starring the very good-looking and extremely capable George O'Brien, with the beautiful and also talented Cecilia Parker. Hers was another Hollywood story of a beautiful talent who apparently crossed the studio bosses, because she obviously had the looks and ability to have become a star."Wings over Wyoming" is as good a title as "Hollywood Cowboy" because all those words figure in the story, well co-written by Dan Jarrett and director Ewing Scott, who was helped in the directing by the great George Sherman, who helmed many a Western movie.It is a slightly involved story, with bunches of characters including city-slicker gangsters trying to transfer their skulduggery to the ranges of, yes, Wyoming.There have been other efforts with a similar premise, but none better than this one.I highly recommend this, for cast, scenery (actually California), and good story. I just hope you find a better print.

Hollywood COWBOYThis was a pleasant little surprise, a clever and entertaining programmer western. It's a modern day western, a mix of roadsters and horse riding, familiar as the so called Autry Fantasy. In this case it seems that some actual logic entered into the existence of these two dimensions to exist side by side. The cattle ranchers who have to round up their cattle are saddle bound. Visitors from the outside world drive cars. But that's just one little witticism.The picture begins with a series of newspaper headlines to the effect that the city is cleaning up the gangsters who are running the protection racket. The head bad guy, played by Charles Middelton, none other than the immortal Ming the Merciless himself, decides to lay low for a while and take their racket to the countryside and inopportune the cattle ranchers. Their techniques are very up-to-date, using an airplane to buzz the herds and scatter them preventing their going to market. So there's that, somewhat typical western plot, somewhat updated.There's Maude Eberne playing the crusty old dame role to the hilt, resisting the evil entreaties of Charles Middleton. She has, wait for it, a beautiful daughter. Now throw in a joker in the form of George O'Brien, star of an enormous string of 30s cowboy pictures playing Jeffrey Carson, star of western movies. They are filming in the area and have just completed the last shot. A writer chum from New York (G. Gatsby Holmes (!)) running away from a divorce subpoena wants O'Brien to go camping for a few weeks and is in the habit of quoting Shakespeare. Yeah, this is a western where the Bard is liberally quoted. The henchman of the villain rough up the beautiful daughter and O'Brien saves the day while still in character. Known as a "meet cute". She doesn't realize that he's a movie star and for the rest of the film he has a wry smile on his face as people think he's just some sort of saddle bum named Buck. Satirizing class differences lends a farcical aspect to the story.O'Brien has a sidekick played by Dan Wolheim, for a programmer he was more than just good. He plays it as a rough precursor to Fred Mertz, grouchy. Buck and his two sidekicks have been taken on by Eburne as cowpunchers. Then we have the heat turned up on the farcical as the rancher's beautiful daughter is being courted by a New York scion to a Park Avenue fortune or whom she has no regard whatsoever. But he is total denial. Check out his name: Westbrook Courtney and he wears an ascot and drives the most beautiful Rolls Royce roadster. The comedy comes when he notices beautiful daughter and "Buck" getting together and he takes Buck aside to tell him, for his own good, to know his place because he's only going to be disappointed and hurt if he tries to romance a lady above his station. Of course George O'Brien finds the whole affaire amusing. As a movie star he outranks the Park Avenue scion. So Courtney is out in the RR roadster and come across a wanted poster with George O'Brien's picture on it. Of course its a prop left over from the movie he was filming. Courtney can't wait to tell everybody they have been harboring a criminal. Everybody, including the Cattleman's Association, gets hot under the collar that they've caught a dangerous criminal, so beautiful daughter goes to warn "Buck". More farce as she lets on that she knows his secret, which means to him that she's found out that he's a movie star and to her that he's a wanted criminal with a price on his head. Courtney calls the sheriff who arrives expecting to arrest a criminal. Now if this had been most any other programmer western, O'Brien would have spent the last twenty minutes of the film under suspicion as the bad guy in disguise, put in jail and breaking jail to capture the real bad guy and prove himself innocent. Here the sheriff walks in on this proto lynch mob and has a good laugh because he knows that he's the actor from the recently departed film company and the wanted poster is just a prop. In these pictures the Sheriff is usually a boob willing to believe the first superficial story placed before him.Of course it seems as though O'Brien doesn't take anything seriously because he's the only one aware that he's in a movie and can rise above it. He finally speaks up and asks if anyone's noticed that all of their cattle troubles began when Middleton, remember, he's the villain, arrived in town and began selling protection? How many westerns, how many movies in general, is it so obvious that all of their troubles are easily identified as being a villain's doing, yet they always focus on some innocent, usually the hero, because really without it there's maybe 20 minutes of story? And the crime is usually the murder of the heroine's father which she reacts to with mere petulance and anger. Hey, its just a programmer western! Significantly they were referred to as "juveniles in the day.Then it really begins to get good. O'Brien has a plan. He calls a movie stunt friend to fly out and when they commence their cattle round up the bad guys bring out their beat up biplane only to be trumped by this beautiful all silver Ryan ST monoplane. They force the biplane down and he tells them where the bad guys hide out is. They bomb it sending them scurrying and they are rounded up by the cattlemen and O'Brien and the beautiful daughter kiss and all's right with the world.

Although the events setting the stage for the plot are unusual, once this newness wears off you'll probably realize that this is a pretty standard B-movie Western. It's a decent time-passer, but not much else.George O'Brien plays a cowboy movie star on location in Wyoming. While he's finishing a film, the local ranchers are being victimized by mobsters (in Wyoming?!) who are convincing everyone that it's the work of strikers. In return, the mobsters offer "protection" to the ranchers to get their cattle to market unharmed. Soon after George's friend 'Shakespeare' arrives (Joe Caits), the two are pulled into the battle between mobsters and ranchers--none of which know George is a movie star (apparently none of them ever went to a movie). Not surprisingly, by the end of the film, the baddies are captured by O'Brien and he gets the girl--exactly like you'd see in any other B-Western of the time.No real surprises here--just a fairly typical baddies in the contemporary West getting theirs from the hero. Well made and watchable but not a film to rush to see.

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.