Sun 19 Oct 2014
A JOHNNY MACK BROWN Western Movie Review: TRIGGER FINGERS (1946).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[16] Comments
TRIGGER FINGERS. Monogram Pictures, 1946. Johnny Mack Brown, Sam Hurricane Benton, Raymond Hatton, Jennifer Holt, Riley Hill, Steve Clark, Eddie Parker. Director: Lambert Hillyer.
By the time the 1940s came around and almost every movie that Johnny Mack Brown made was a western, and a B-western at that, he was not exactly fat, or perhaps even overweight, but he was, shall we say, chunky, and not exactly what a small kid’s idea of what a western star should look like.
The small kid being me. My cowboy heroes were Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lash LaRue and the Durango Kid. After that came a bunch of other fellows: Rex Allen, Monte Hale, Johnny Mack Brown and a few more. I won’t mention any that I omitted, so not to embarrass anyone, but I will point out another reason I might not have mentioned one of your favorites, such as the fact that Hopalong Cassidy’s movies never seemed to play in my small Michigan town.
In any case, Trigger Fingers is the first movie starring Johnny Mack Brown that I’ve seen in maybe 65 years, and even though there wasn’t much a plot, nor even a lot of action, I enjoyed it.
Turns out that someone wants some land owned by Raymond Hatton’s character, and when his son is framed for killing a fellow card player, that someone and his gang think they have a means of forcing a sale through a little judicious blackmail.
Little do they know that Hatton has a good friend in Sam “Hurricane” Benton, who’s calm demeanor and soft Alabaman drawl belies a quick wit and even quicker trigger finger. I don’t know if that’s where the title of the movie comes from, but it works for me.
October 19th, 2014 at 11:11 pm
I’ve seen some of Johnny Mack Brown’s older westerns and they are good, but by this point he seemed a bit long in the tooth for an action star. He looked too much like my grandfather for me to be entirely comfortable with him as an action hero at that point.
Of course considering how long he had been doing this director Lambert Hillyer should have known how to direct a movie.
October 19th, 2014 at 11:26 pm
I recently saw Johnny Mack Brown in “Outlaw Gold.” It’s not much, but it isn’t terrible either. That one at least was directed by Wallace Fox who had a better sense of directing than Hillyer did, at least in his earliest Westerns
October 19th, 2014 at 11:34 pm
Johnny is only in his early forties here. He was always stocky, just have a look at his silent pictures, not westerns, but big time productions. He was attractive but got old early. Being avuncular does not seem like much of a problem.
October 20th, 2014 at 6:28 am
Like John Wayne, Johnny Mack Brown starred in a big-budget early sound western (BILLY THE KID) and then went on to B-westerns, but unlike the Duke, Johnny never got out of them again.
October 20th, 2014 at 6:31 am
If you want a real treat, try “The Silver Bullet” (1942). It’s a B-movie Western, the second of three Joseph H. Lewis did with star Johnny Mack Brown. Lewis is a great director, and he is showing what he could do with a no-budget B-movie.
I wish this film were shown regularly in film history classes. It would exemplify the B-Western.
October 20th, 2014 at 8:27 am
VERY true, Mike!
October 20th, 2014 at 1:54 pm
I don’t recall going to see a Johnny Mack Brown on purpose, but his name was certainly among those from which I could choose. In most cases I just went to whatever western was showing when I went to the weekly “chapter” as we referred to the serials. Mostly I went to Roy Rogers and Gene Autry films, but I do recall seeing one or two of the later Hopalong Cassidy films. It cost 12 cents to go to the movies in those days.
October 20th, 2014 at 2:17 pm
Some days stand out more in your memory than others. I remember going to the movies the night the price went up from 12 cents to 15. Traumatic! Luckily my Aunt Nancy had given my brother and I each an extra nickel to buy a box of candy. Jujubes? I think so, but we didn’t have any that night.
October 20th, 2014 at 2:36 pm
Sorry guys I don’t recall movies ever being less than fifty cents.
Re Johnny Mack Brown he was certainly good looking younger and not exclusively in westerns. He is Jean Harlow’s reporter boyfriend in THE SECRET SIX and gets the girl over pal Clark Gable, or would if he didn’t get killed.
He had also been a college football star which, like John Wayne and many others, was his ticket to the big screen. Ironically when he was younger he was known for his great body just as western star George O’Brien was.
His later westerns are entertaining, but I appreciate them now more than I did then; my pantheon was pretty much the same as Steve’s save there was no shortage of Hoppy since I was part of the first television generation. Save for some of Roy’s movies I saw all these on television not on the big screen. By the time I was going to Saturday matinees they were a handful of cartoons, some serial chapters, and a feature and then you had to leave and comeback and pay again later that day to see whatever was playing the rest of the week.
October 20th, 2014 at 4:10 pm
David, in The Secret Six there is a big secret — Clark Gable takes the film, you don’t even have to know the history, just see Gable’s part evolve. And Brown’s sink. Next time these guys met professionally, Gable replaced Brown after most of Johnny’s scenes had been shot. Haven’t done any research on this, but believe the film was called Laughing Sinners. Neil Hamilton, an almost invisible actor, got the reviews and that illustrates what criticism is worth. It also illustrates how wrong the oft quoted and seldom correct mantra of studio creating stars has always been. They did not ‘create stars’ but rather recognized success when they saw it, and ran with the goods to the market.
October 20th, 2014 at 5:24 pm
Barry
I was just discussing casting, Gable takes every scene he is in. It’s also fairly interesting to see Ralph Bellamy as a gangster (though not for long)in that one.
Johnny was an ingratiating and likable actor, but there is no question he was not a superstar in a class with Gable. Frankly it is hard to believe Harlow is attracted to him and not Gable.
October 20th, 2014 at 5:32 pm
All well taken, David, especially regarding Bellamy whom I had forgotten. He was quite effective. An aside re Ralph. In 1940 Louis Hayward did Dance, Girl Dance, not a successful film, but a good cast, including Bellamy. In 1969, Louis did The Survivors, also unsuccessful, with a good cast. After his first episode, and Louis had entirely forgotten, working with Ralph, he observed , and this is amazing, how tall and handsome Bellamy was and that film did not do him justice. Had no memory whatsoever of the other picture despite doing the two men doing a scene in the rain together.
October 20th, 2014 at 6:22 pm
In Trenton, NJ all the movies were a quarter in the early 1950’s. I just went to see FURY and the price was $10.00. That’s 40 times the price of 60 years ago. The popcorn used to be a quarter also; this time I paid $7.50 and it was almost inedible because of excessive salt. Imagine not only do they charge a ridiculous price but they can’t even make it the right way.
The movie? It bought back my army training days. Though I never saw action; we were urged to kill everything in sight.
October 20th, 2014 at 6:27 pm
I hope you’ve gotten over that urge, Walker.
October 20th, 2014 at 7:06 pm
Yes, I gotten over that urge. Now my urge is to *collect* every film noir or western in sight, not to mention pulps and vintage paperbacks!
As the old saying goes, “Make collections, not war”. The non-collectors have it wrong and say “Make peace, not war”.
October 21st, 2014 at 1:50 pm
prices then and now:
Howard DeVore once told me that buying a pulp was a good deal because you got as much fiction as a novel and for the same amount. This was back when SF pulps from the 40s averaged $8. From that and other comments ($25/wk for an apartment in NYC) lead me to conclude that while official estimates of inflating indicated that prices have gone up 12x since the 30s my own estimate is 30 times any prices mentioned back then.