Sun 21 Jun 2009
A Western Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER (1938).
Posted by Steve under Movie stars & directors , Reviews , Western movies[3] Comments
THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER. Paramount, 1938. Douglass Dumbrille, Sidney Toler, Russell Hayden, Stanley Andrews. Weldon Heyburn, Charlotte Field, Monte Blue. Based on the novel by Zane Grey. Director: Lesley Selander.
Douglass Dumbrille is the kind of actor one vaguely remembers as a perennial nasty who never really scaled the heights.
He had his moments, though: pushing bamboo shoots under Gary Cooper’s fingernails in Lives of a Bengal Lancer, chasing Jackie Cooper up the rigging in Treasure Island (center right), or looking down his nose at the Marx Brothers in The Big Store, happy times in a busy career that somehow never achieved the status of, say, Lionel Atwill or Vincent Price.
Imagine my surprise, then, when he turned up as the out-and-out hero of an engaging B-Western called The Mysterious Rider. Dumbrille stars here for his first and only time as Pecos Bill, the nom du rue of a legendary highwayman who gets a hankerin’ to revisit the old homestead he left twenty years ago, wanted for murder.
From this point, the story veers toward The Odyssey, with Pecos returning to his old ranch unrecognized, greeted by the dogs and finding his daughter beset by unworthy suitors-then setting about to put things right.
Mysterious Rider shows what magic can be done by a capable director with familiar material. Lesley Selander spent thirty years in Bronson Canyon, Gower Gulch and other stomping grounds of the B-Western, churning out vehicles for Hopalong Cassidy, Buck Jones and Tim Holt, and he always took it seriously, investing his work with inventive camera angles, capable stunting and (most important) snappy pace.
Here given a modestly off-beat story and an unlikely star, he turns out a fast, fun film, enlivened considerably by Dumbrille’s evident delight in playing a good guy — although his typecast background makes it easy to believe that he may well have been a road agent.
One additional note: in 1957 Dumbrille, at age 70, married the 28 year old daughter of his friend and fellow character actor Alan Mowbray. They were still married at the time of his death, seventeen years later.
June 21st, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Have only seen a little of Lesley Selander’s work.
Encore Western Channel just showed his TOMAHAWK TRAIL (1957). This is a low budget B-Western. It’s got a lot of virtues: vigorous storytelling, social commentary, and good acting. It stars Chuck Connors, one year before he became the Rifleman.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:12 am
Dumbrille was one of the more versatile ‘villains’ who was always reliable in a drama or a comedy, and it’s a shame this seems to be his one shot at playing a lead.
Incidentally, this and several other Zane Grey novels were adapted in comic books in the Dell Four Color series, and are among the comics that can be downloaded for free at several sites. I’m not sure if the book is available free on line, but being Zane Grey is shouldn’t be too hard to find.
Selander is one of those solid directors who did a lot of good work over the years like Lambert Hillyer, Joe Kane, and William Witney, and most of them seem to have made a lot of westerns along the way. They put more effort than they had to in films a lot of hacks would have shrugged off, and they did it with imagination, skill, and usually on or under budget and on schedule.
December 17th, 2018 at 9:40 am
Sounds like a fun way to while away some time. Dumbrille was one of those villains I often hope would turn out to be a good guy in the end, so it is nice to know he did get this chance to be the hero.