West of the Divide (1934)

How sad is this?

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Frequently used story gets a good presentation here in "West of the Divide," and the excellent cast helps ensure high quality.Young John Wayne and grizzled George Hayes start with what I learned in college theater-history classes was called a "feather-duster" scene, where characters -- such as a maid, with a feather-duster -- tell the background of the story, today called "the back story." It's kinda corny, but isn't too damaging.Probably even in 1934 what was about to happen was predictable, but, before that predictable ending, enough happens in between it should hold the viewer's interest. It held mine.When the hero meets the leading lady, there is no poor-writing instant romance. In fact, there is no real contact. It's an unusual boy-meets-girl.That girl is Virginia Faire Brown, who is shown with 74 credits, although she never rose to be a major player and certainly not a star. But she is very attractive, even elegant, with an unusual dark-haired beauty.Her character's father is played by the veteran Lafe McKee. The sheriff is by that veteran, and very talented actor, who didn't, alas, often enough get to show just how good an actor he was, Earl Dwire.Chief bad guy is played by "Loyd Whitlock," who is usually known as Lloyd Whitlock, a very busy man with more than 200 credits!OK, good story, great cast ably performing, lots of riding scenes, and a no-music-track realism that should keep you pinned to your seat. And if you want to see it, there's a good print at YouTube.

Along with the usual cast of characters , that the Duke usually performs with this movie attracted my attention more so than some of his other "b" westerns save for a few,, maybe because in the beginning of this one he plays or rather I should say pretends to be a killer to get deep inside of a gang to find out who killed his dad and kidnapped his brother,, he is very good at this and has the criminals totally convinced well except for one,, and eventually they find out he is not who he says that he really is... Yakima Cannut , and George "Gabby" Hayes also star with John Wayne,, rather enjoyable western LoneStar. I would definitely recommend this to anyone being a fan of the early John Wayne movies before he became a star.

Pretty tame Lone Star fare, not up to later standards. Nothing much distinguishes this 60 minutes of sagebrush opera. The plot is easy to follow-- Wayne assumes a false identity in order to bring his father's killer to justice. In the process he rescues an old rancher and his daughter from the clutches of a ruthless land grabber and unexpectedly finds a brother. Unfortunately, the locations are nondescript, not much stunt work or hard riding, while the outlaw gang gives up without the usual fight. Also, there's no real personality or color to compensate for the general absence of excitement. Hayes and Canutt too are largely wasted. Perhaps the high point is a lengthy fist-fight that doesn't quite follow the usual formula in outcome. All in all, however, a definitely sub-standard Wayne Western.

John Wayne stars as Ted Hayden in this one, lithe young companion of grizzled old George 'Gabby' Hayes, who was just starting to develop into the character now so familiar to Hopalong Cassidy fans. Ted is an orphan, left for dead by the varmints who done fer his paw, and saved from beneath his father's dead body by Hayes' Dusty Rhodes. All this – and much more – is related to the viewer in the opening scene, a conversation between the pair that is nothing but a huge chunk of exposition that is as lacking in subtlety as it is replete with information. Hayden has returned to his hometown to catch the man with the mad laugh who killed his father, and poses as Gat Ganns, all-round bad egg, who bears more than a passing physical resemblance to our hero.This is a fairly acceptable entry in John Wayne's Lone Star series of films made in the early to mid-thirties. There is quite a diverting storyline, even though the acting is as creaky as usual for these flicks. It's the stunts that stand out in all of the low budget efforts Wayne made in those days, and their success is thanks to stuntman extraordinaire Yakima Canutt. You get the impression as you watch that some real hair-raising risks were taken to capture these scenes – and you sometimes wonder whether it was worth it considering the poor quality of most other aspects of the films. Watch out for Canutt standing in for bad guy Lloyd Whitlock, who sports a full head of greying hair, in the fight with Wayne near the end of the film. Canutt had dark hair and a noticeable bald patch, but hack director R. N. Bradbury obviously didn't believe in going to the expense of making even a perfunctory effort to disguise the actors' physical differences. Oddly enough, it's this kind of lack of attention to detail that make the Lone Star films so curiously endearing.