Mon 2 Jan 2017
A Western Movie Review: TRIGGER FINGERS (1946).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[13] Comments
TRIGGER FINGERS. Monogram, 1946. Johnny Mack Brown, Raymond Hatton, Jennifer Holt, Riley Hill, Steve Clark, Eddie Parker. Director: Lambert Hillyer.
For a former football player, Johnny Mack Brown was a pretty good actor. He appeared in a few straight dramas over a career of 40 years or so, but he found his niche in Hollywood as a western star, mostly of the “B” variety, and was always a favorite of mine, starting when I was 8 or 9 years old.
You can forget the title of this one. “Trigger Fingers” could have applied to several hundred of these crank-em-out westerns, and it would have worked just the same. This one starts when a young cowboy shoots a man who has tried to cheat him at a game of cards, then has to make fast tracks out of town thinking he’d killed the fellow.
It turns out that he only winged him, as he intended to do, but for reasons nefarious (blackmail), a plan is cooked up by a gang of local bad guys to make everyone think the gunman he shot is dead. Enter Johnny Mack Brown to the aid of the young man’s father (Raymond Hatton).
This one starts out slow, but before the less than an hour’s running time has gone by, there have been enough twists in the story to satisfy any 8 or 9 year old boy’s wish for a stirring whiz bang of a Saturday afternoon at the movies. I think the lack of any time taken out for a song or some not very funny comedy routines may have had something to do with that.
January 3rd, 2017 at 3:24 pm
This sounds like a good movie.
Had never heard of it before.
Its abundance of plot sounds especially good.
Thanks for bringing it to our attention!
I’ve only seen a little of Johnny Mack Brown’s work.
Two 1942 Westerns directed by the great Joseph H. Lewis are admirably complex and above average:
The Silver Bullet
Boss of Hangtown Mesa.
Among the best early dramas with Brown in a supporting role:
Our Dancing Daughters
Female.
January 3rd, 2017 at 3:42 pm
Warner Brothers has come out with several box sets of Monogram westerns, and quite a few of them are ones that Johnny Mack Brown starred in. Other feature players that I remember off-hand are Whip Wilson and Jimmy Wakely.
This one, as I said, has quite a few plot twists, which is a plus. On the negative side, some of the plot twists really don’t make a lot of sense — only perhaps to the 8 or 9 year boy that I referred to in my review!
Still, it was fun to watch last week as an adult as well. A steady diet, though? Perhaps not.
January 3rd, 2017 at 7:01 pm
I’ve been thinking about my review of this movie and the previous comment I made. What was the audience for movies like this back in 1946? That’s a little before my time, but one of the two local theaters was still showing B-westerns as part of two-movie Saturday afternoon matinees when I was that age.
Who was there? Was it only 8 to 9 year old boys? (Or a little older, of course.) I don’t remember for sure, but I don’t recall many adults being there, unless they were there with their kids. And no girls, or very few.
January 3rd, 2017 at 7:25 pm
1946 is far different from 1956, as an example. By the mid-fifties al the B – westerns had vanished, or relocated to television. Johnny Mack Brown, Allan ‘Rocky’ Lane, Wild bill Elliott were unemployable. And if you think I am mistaken, check it out. In the forties, boys and girls, went to the movies, but ten years later, only older children did, and they saw adult style motion pictures. These included many westerns, but the leads were played by Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, John Wayne, and newcomers, Rory Calhoun, Audie Murphy, etc. There were in no way b – people in B pictures but multi million dollar projects. Notice I did not include Roy Rogers or Gene Autry in the unemployable list, but while they were just that in the movies, obviously they found other productive things to do with their time.
January 3rd, 2017 at 7:40 pm
I don’t disagree with you at all, Barry. In fact I remember the transition to bigger budget westerns and new stars very well. I think the western movie grew up pretty much at the same time I did.
What I was asking, though, is who the audience was for the earlier low budget westerns? Were they made for adults as well as children, or really only for children?
January 3rd, 2017 at 7:58 pm
They varied. I know my father loved the B – westerns. And, both Roy and Gene were in the top ten of box office stars, not the western poll, but the real one, with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. As appoint of reference, the first time I remember being at the movies, it was a double bill. Joel McCrea as The Virginian, and coincidentally, Johnny Mack Brown in Drifting Along.
January 3rd, 2017 at 8:36 pm
I love the B-westerns but there are two things that make such films very dated today. The singing cowboy and the silly, not so funny sidekick are very painful to sit through all these years later.
As a kid, I did not give a damn for the singing and even now I will fast forward through the singing. I guess the singing was aimed for the adults in the 1940’s.
But the silly and stupid sidekicks were definitely meant for the young boys.
January 3rd, 2017 at 9:03 pm
By the time I was six the B Western was pretty much over at the movies. Even the Saturday morning matinee was usually cartoons, some serial episodes and a feature rather than a B.
Even that was over by 1960.
Johnny Mack Brown is the romantic lead with Jean Harlow in SUICIDE SQUAD where he is top billed over Clark Gable. He also did a BILLY THE KID pretty much remade with Robert Taylor.
January 3rd, 2017 at 9:13 pm
A cliche suggests that B Westerns were popular with adults in the South, especially the rural South. And kids all over liked Westerns.
My mother, who grew up in 1930’s Chicago (urban, Northern!) was very fond of Johnny Mack Brown. She and her brother used to go to matinees with thousands of kids. She talked much more about serials, which she loved, more than Westerns though.
In Joseph H. Lewis B Westerns, the songs are often the high points of the films. And the clowning by Fuzzy Knight and Dub Taylor is good.
January 3rd, 2017 at 9:16 pm
Thinking about film audiences in adult/children divide is misleading.
The core audience in 1940’s Hollywood was people 13 to 25. They were the huge, steady moviegoing audience who kept Hollywood profitable.Such young people often didn’t have much money.
January 3rd, 2017 at 10:42 pm
David, I think you mean The secret Six, and Wallace Beery is the star ahead of them all. Some background. It was Gable’s first year in films, and the story is set up for his reporter character, Johnny’s best friend in the film, to be killed off about half way point, but smart people prevailed, Johnny’s character got killed instead, and Gable finishes as the star, and has the final scene as a kind of curtain call. By the end of that year, Gable was Gable, and Johnny had been let go.
January 3rd, 2017 at 11:02 pm
More about Gable and Brown. Laughing Sinners went into production with Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown but several weeks into production, Brown’s footage was totally scrapped, and he was replaced by…an aside on this , and in the notes of the newly released Johnny Guitar blu ray.
Crawford thought her part needed beefing up, and the line she used, according to Philip Yordan was: I stand around playing with my self. Let Sterling play with himself, in this picture I am Clark Gable.
And that is just what happened, making something of interest out of a good but undistinguished tory.
January 3rd, 2017 at 11:16 pm
story. Tory is the political party I always vote for.