The Man from Utah (1934)

Good concept, poorly executed.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

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

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This Western sees John Wayne playing John Weston, the eponymous Man from Utah, he is down to his last dollar until he helps a martial by gunning down three bank robbers. He is offered a job; the martial needs somebody to help expose a gang that is rigging rodeo competitions. It could be a dangerous job; several competitors that aren't part of the gang have had 'accidents' including fatal 'snake bites' while riding a horse! As he heads towards the rodeo he thwarts a stage coach robbery; on board are the bank owner's daughter and a woman connected to the gang. Once in town he enters the rodeo and on the first day does very well and is the favourite to be the overall champion… the gang want him to throw the event but if he doesn't take their offer of money there is still the possibility that he will get 'snake-bitten'.With a run time of under an hour this film is definitely rather short… and when you consider that quite a bit of that time is taken footage of an actual rodeo there is little time for the story. The plot is decent enough and there is a good amount of action. The characters are staples of the genre with little real development; there is hardly time for any! There is no real doubt about who is good and who is bad; one bad character changes sides but even this is because the gang plans to leave her behind. The cast are solid enough certainly better than one might expect for a short low budget feature. Overall this isn't a must see unless you are a John Wayne completist but it is worth watching if you want a short western.

John Wayne made a number of crummy movies at Lone Star. Trying to decide which was worst is not easy, but "The Man From Utah" is hard to beat.John Weston (Wayne) rides into a new town looking for work, and immediately jumps in to stop a robbery in progress. U. S. Marshal George Higgins (George Hayes, later known as Gabby Hayes) then asks Weston to help solve a series of mysterious rodeo deaths he believes are caused by insiders running the rodeo, whose hired hands always win when these rodeos end in sudden death."It's mighty peculiar that these outsiders fall off those tough broncs sufferin' from snake bite," Higgins says. "I tell you it just ain't natural." That's some mighty fine po-lease work, I tells yuh.Everything about "The Man From Utah" suggests a cut-rate, hurry-up production, more so than the usual Lone Star offerings Wayne made with director Robert N. Bradbury. The movie is slathered with minutes of footage of real rodeo action which seems a decade older than the rest of the film. Parading American Indians, steer roping, stagecoach races, people in stands waving and cheering, it just goes on and on.Wayne is terrible in this one, stiff and wooden. He talks in a monotone and barely seems engaged in what he's doing. A weak script supplies his character with zero motivation to do more. Asked by this guy he never met to go undercover and risk his neck to solve the rodeo mystery, Weston simply smiles and says "Sounds great to me!" without even asking about pay."I'm kind of green at this racket," he says at one point. Green don't cut it here.For some reason, the film introduces Weston on a horse and singing. I think it was him singing, and not the horse, though each seems to lip-sync as well as the other. When Weston reaches town, he puts the guitar behind a tree and the singing never comes up again. Why bring it out in the first place?Padding. It's the reason for the stock footage, too, and a lot of other things in this movie. Take a sequence where Higgins takes Weston to meet a man chopping wood, who then takes Weston to a canoe on a river, whereupon they paddle to a small corral where the guy gives Weston a horse and tells him there's a trail to the town where the rodeo is being held. Why did we need to see all this, if not to fill time? Fifty-two minutes never seemed so hard to fill.Everything is off in this film, from the opening gunfight (everyone including Wayne wave their pistols up and down when firing them, like finger jabs) to the closing battle, where Wayne rides up on two men who shoot and shoot at him, not breaking stride until he jumps off and tackles them to the ground simultaneously.Hayes is fun to watch at times, and so was Polly Ann Young as the pretty love interest, though like everyone else she's saddled with bad dialogue trying to shoehorn a love story in the off minutes. Everyone else plays their parts like rejected extras from a social- disease short.It's hard to rustle much love for this one. Even one of the more positive reviews of this movie notes: "Looking too deep into the story shows its flaws." I second that sentiment, provided "looking too deep" means watching it for more than 90 seconds. "The Man From Utah" is something you don't want to watch unless you are a John Wayne fan, in which case you REALLY don't want to watch it.

A film that falls into the class of "great" just because it's so bad, it's neat.This movie should provide inspiration to a whole slew of 12-year-olds wanting to get into the film business. Leastwise, it's about the same level of quality in it's stilted dialog, pregnant pauses, outright goofs, and overacting. On the other hand, it provides an interesting study in the evolution of film making from the silent era to talkies.The good guys really wear white hats and the bad guys wear black. Can't beat that!It has John Wayne trying to be a singing cowboy. Yep, Pilgrim, THE John Wayne.Add to that Gabby Hayes - a great Western character actor, and Loretta Young's lesser known (but just as pretty) sister. Don't know who the gorgeous senorita femme-fatale was, she kind of disappeared after this film.Plus any film that was made in Lone Pine has to be OK!

"The Man From Utah" is another of the Lone Star Westerns Wayne made in the 30's. This one has a rodeo setting with the Duke trying to outsmart the gang behind the murders and deceptive practices occurring therein.The producers make extensive use of footage shot at some long forgotten rodeo. With the money they saved they actually were able to come up with a pleasant enough musical score, a rarity for poverty row quickies. They even were able to incorporate a left over "musical" number from one of Wayne's ill-fated "Singin'" Sandy Saunders efforts at the beginning, even though it has nothing to do with the rest of the picture.The cast includes Polly Ann (sister of Loretta) Young as the heroine and Anita Compille as the good/bad girl competing for the Duke's affections. George (pre-"Gabby")Hayes is along again, this time as a Marshal. Edward Piel Sr. is the chief bad guy and once again proving that as an actor, he made a great stuntman, Yakima Canutt.Not the best of the Lone Star series, but not the worst either.