KING OF THE RODEO. Universal, 1929. Hoot Gibson, Kathryn Crawford, Slim Summerfield, Monte Montague. Director: Henry MacRae. Shown at Cinefest 19, Syracuse NY, March 1999.

   One of the high points of the weekend. Hoot is thrown out by his rancher father because he wants to ride in a rodeo in Chicago rather than go to college. Hoot’s films are notable for their superb action and good humor and his search for his rodeo shirts (ill-advisedly stolen by the film’s villain during the commission of a more serious crime) provided both laughs and thrills in a motorcycle/car chase that kept this eternal adolescent on the edge of his seat.

SPRING PARADE. Universal, 1940. Deanna Durbin, Robert Cummings, Mischa Auer, Henry Stephenson, S. Z. Sakall. Director: Henry Koster.

   Saturday night featured a “lost” Deanna Durbin musical Spring Parade, with the unbeatable Deanna playing a girl from the country who befriends the Emperor Franz Joseph II in pre-war Vienna, benefiting her boyfriend, the insufferable Robert Cummings and her employer, S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, being his usual … uh … cuddly self. DD is in fine voice and there’s a scene at a beer garden where she sang and danced her way into my heart. I love this kind of schmaltz.