Bob Wills Movies
"The King of Western Swing," Bob Wills became but one of the many hillbilly and country & western recording artists to be corralled by B-Western producers who counted on the genre's popularity in the South and Midwest. Accompanied by his band, the Texas Playboys, Wills found his way into Take Me Back to Oklahoma (1940), a Tex Ritter oater which, when premiering in the band's home base of Tulsa, was advertised as starring Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys, "with Tex Ritter." More propitious than this weak Ritter entry was a series of Columbia Westerns starring former Hopalong Cassidy juvenile Russell Hayden. Although rather neglected by the powers that be, the little sagebrush thrillers have stood the test of time rather well and are a great deal more enjoyable today than some of their more high-profile competitors. And unlike most of his colleagues, Wills did more than merely perform his best-selling songs. In one memorable sequence in A Tornado in the Saddle (1942), for example, the bandleader engaged in a wild donnybrook with leading man Hayden, and although he was most likely doubled by Ted Mapes in part of the fight -- which came complete with Columbia's bruising sound effects -- Wills more than held his own in the close-ups. When his contract with Columbia ended in 1944, Wills concentrated on live performances and his recording career. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1996
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In the 1930s, musician Bob Wills took his love for the blues and jazz, fused it with the country sounds that dominated his native Texas and Oklahoma, and created a whole new form of music -- Western swing, in which big bands (complete with horns and strings) played up-tempo dance tunes that moved Western music in a brand new direction. Bob Wills and his band the Texas Playboys became massively popular in the Southwest, and the Western swing sound they pioneered is still championed today by groups such as Asleep at the Wheel and the Hot Club of Cowtown. Fiddlin' Man: The Life and Times of Bob Willis tells the story of this musical maverick and features vintage film clips of Wills and his band performing some of their biggest hits. Songs include "San Antonio Rose," "Time Changes Everything," "Sittin' on Top of the World," "Lone Star Rag," and more. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1976
- R
A Kentucky-born maiden realizes her dream of becoming a country music star, but finds that along the way, her single-minded determination has caused her to lose things far more precious than fame or money when she gets involved with corrupt music executives who are really only interested in exploiting her. The film was later retitled Country Music Daughter. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1965
Race car driver Ticker Welsh is convinced that the senseless death of his fiancee was caused by an irresponsible colleague, Mickey Arnold. Wanting to get even, he enters Atlanta's Dixie 400 stock-car race. Former NASCAR champion Richard Petty makes a cameo. The race scenes were films at the Atlanta International Raceway. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1947
Filmed in "glorious" Trucolor, a low-budget substitute for Technicolor, Under Colorado Skies remains a standard B-Western, neither better nor worse than the majority of late-1940s sagebrush fare from genre specialist Republic Pictures. Monte Hale stars as a medical student moonlighting as a bank teller. Arriving on the scene in the middle of a robbery, Hale discovers that one of the bandits (John Alvin) is the brother of his girlfriend (Adrian Booth). To shield the wayward youth from prosecution, our hero accepts blame for both the robbery and the death of the bank's owner (Raymond Bond), but manages to escape on the way to jail. Hooking up with entertainers Foy Willing & the Riders of the Purple Sage, he then goes undercover as a performer in a saloon owned by Paul Hurst. Learning the whereabouts of the bandits, Monte fakes his own death and is later able to flush out their leader, the nefarious William Haade. As always, Hale does well in both the fistfights and as a balladeer, accompanied here by Foy Willing and the Riders in such selections as "San Antonio Rose", by Bob Wills, "Holiday for the Blues", by Willing and Sid Robin, and "Wait for the Wagon", by George P. Knauff and Sid Robin. In one of her eight westerns with Hale, Adrian Booth is, as always, a fetching sight and the veteran Paul Hurst makes a welcome addition to the Hale oeuvre. Hurst would go on to appear in all but one of Hale's subsequent vehicles, providing his own brand of homey comic relief. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Monte Hale, Adrian Booth, (more)
- 1944
Former Hopalong Cassidy sidekick Russell Hayden retains his nickname of Lucky in this average entry in his short-lived starring series for Columbia. The foreman of the Bar W ranch, Lucky Rawlins finds himself cheated out of a check for 12,000 dollars (the proceeds from a cattle drive). Unbeknownst to all and sundry, the culprit is none other than the local banker, Cash Watson (John Maxwell), who has learned that the railroad is interested in buying up the local ranches. Watson cruelly forecloses on the Bar W's owner, Rance Williams (Frank LaRue), but the latter is saved in the nick of time by friendly bank clerk Bert Saunders (Forrest Taylor), who offers him his life savings. Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak, Watson has his henchman, Duke Cudlow (Ted Mapes), frame Williams in the murder of Saunders and then proceeds to have a phony cattle inspector (Edmund Cobb) quarantine the Bar W. Lucky, however, is on to all this skullduggery and cooks up a scheme to trap the crooked banker that includes having sidekick Cannonball (Dub Taylor) dress up as a woman. In between the general mayhem, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys perform "O.K. Oklahoma," "I'm Ridin' on Down," "Trouble on the Range," and several other cowboy-swing selections. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Russell Hayden, Dub Taylor, (more)
- 1943
With Silver City Raiders, perennial western sidekick Russell Hayden launched his own starring series. Hayden plays "Lucky", the same character he'd previously essayed in the Hopalong Cassidy films. This time around, Lucky tries to prove that crooked land baron Dawson (Paul Sutton) doesn't have prior claim on the entire territory. When legal methods prove only moderately effective, Lucky and his chums use more direct methods to drive Dawson and his ilk out of town. The film is highlighted by what must be the more unrealistically bloodless gun duel in screen history. Supporting Russell Hayden are two carryovers from Columbia's Charles Starrett series, Dub "Cannonball" Taylor and Bob Wills. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Russell Hayden, Bob Wills, (more)
- 1943
Riders of the Northwest Mounted was one of a handful of "northerns" produced by Columbia's B-western unit. Stalwart Russell Hayden and prankish Dub Taylor go through their paces in Mountie garb and Smokey-the-bear hats. They're on the trail of escaped criminal Dick Curtis, who has the whole great white north as his hiding place. Leading lady Adele Mara waits at home patiently for Hayden and Taylor to get their man. A musical number by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys lends an enjoyable if incongruous touch. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1942
Hayden enters the lawless prairie in which criminals have had free reign to manipulate the innocent settlers. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1941
Taking a vacation from her "Blondie" movies, Penny Singleton plays an Eastern girl who follows Horace Greeley's advice and heads westward. She arrives in a flea-bitten frontier town where Marshal Glenn Ford is trying to rid the community of the vicious Pecos Pete. Singleton vies with saloon gal Ann Miller over Glenn Ford's affections, and along the way both actresses perform a few musical numbers. In the end, Singleton helps Ford lasso the villain. Go West, Young Lady takes great pains to avoid originality, especially in a knock-down, drag-out fight scene between Penny Singleton and Ann Miller which was clearly inspired by the Marlene Dietrich-Una Merkel battle in Destry Rides Again (39). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Penny Singleton, Glenn Ford, (more)
Featuring even more musical numbers than usual, this Tex Ritter Western from Monogram marked the feature film debut of the "King of Western Swing," Bob Wills, and his Texas Playboys, a group that also included Wills' brother Johnnie Lee Wills. The group performed no less than four numbers in a row -- including Wills' own Good Old Oklahoma, Lone Star Rag and {&The Bob Wills Special. Surrounding all this harmonizing, screenwriter Robert Emmett Tansey crafted a rather commonplace Western fable of Ritter and sidekick Slim Andrews rescuing a stage line owned by leading lady Terry Walker. The line is being sabotaged by rival operator (Karl Hackett). To get rid of the pesky Ritter, Hackett hires a notorious outlaw, Olin Francis. But Ritter has befriended Francis' young son and the scheme fails miserably. Ritter, whose pugilistic fervor always seemed more authentic than that of most singing cowboys, injured his knee in a fight with Hackett and production had to be suspended for two weeks, a rather expensive development for low-budget Monogram. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
