Thu 28 Jun 2018
A Western Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: TRAIL OF THE VIGILANTES (1940).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews , Western movies[8] Comments
TRAIL OF THE VIGILANTES. Universal, 1940. Franchot Tone, Warren William, Peggy Moran, Andy Devine, Mischa Auer, Porter Hall and Broderick Crawford! Written by Harold Shumate. Directed by Alan Dwan.
Hey, how’s this for an original Western plot: A lawman comes to town to look into a killin’ and discovers that a pillar of the community is actually running the gang of rustlers that murdered his friend.
Oh you’ve seen it? Well maybe not, because this one has the intelligence not to take itself too seriously – or seriously at all.
The intelligence starts with Franchot Tone as an Eastern dude sent West to root around the prairie and look for clues — thank gawd no one tried to pass the cosmopolitan Tone off as a cowboy. Even better, when he gets to the burg of Peaceful Flats and finds the sheriff handcuffed to a lamp post, the laughs start coming, and though they pause for action, they never really stop.
Warren William, his career in sad eclipse, lends his usual polish to the role of dress-heavy, and his veneer of sophistication matches Tone’s perfectly. In direct contrast, Tone gets teamed up with Andy Devine as a cowboy who dreams of becoming a valet (?!) and Broderick Crawford, providing truculent muscle for any and all occasions.
And then there’s Mischa Auer, who comes on as an Indian in a Medicine show, morphs into a Mexican, then a Bullfighter, a Cossack, an Acrobat, Magician and Southern Colonel (!) lending an air of pleasing surrealism to the whole thing.
I should also put in a word for Peggy Moran as a predatory ingénue who spends most of the film trying to seduce Franchot Tone, an agreeable change-up on the usual formula, and she handles it well.
Overall though, the chief attractions of Trail of the Vigilantes are writer Shumate’s ability to overturn the conventions and director Dwan’s relaxed approach to it all. Thus Tone never fires a shot, even in the big saloon shoot-out, but the film makes no big deal of it. On the other hand, his iffy horsemanship gets only passing notice till it emerges to rousing effect in that saloon melee.
So what you have here is that rarity, a film that mocks itself yet remains true to form. Exciting, absurd, funny and formulaic in equal measure, Trail of the Vigilantes emerges as rare fun. And what more could you ask?
June 28th, 2018 at 11:32 am
Welcome to the Broderick Crawford web site!!!
June 28th, 2018 at 12:19 pm
Sounds like a fun evening’s worth; I’ll go looking for it.
That said, here’s a possibly irrelevant side note:
As often happens with actors who get typecast, Franchot Tone got to be annoyed with always playing “the Rich Playboy” (I suspect that one reason he did this picture was that it essentially sent up that type).
As he got older, Tone embraced that aspect of himself, throwing himself full-bore into character parts, with special emphasis on the crusty and cranky old men for which he was now age-appropriate.
Sometime in the early-to-mid ’60s, Tone turned up on The Virginain in an episode called “The Old Cowboy”; he played a ranch hand who’d just hired on at the Shiloh, but his age was catching up with him in bad ways.
This episode got a lot of notice at the time, largely because it was so far out of Franchot Tone’s wheelhouse – but being a skilled actor, Tone aced it (I believe he got at least a mention for an Emmy – might be wrong about that).
Late in life, Tone gave interviews in which he specified “The Old Cowboy” as an acting turn that he was personally proud of – and then said that when he turned on the Late Show ” … I’m the Rich Playboy again …”, and laughed about it.
So There Too.
June 28th, 2018 at 2:26 pm
Why do you believe Warren William’s career has declined and not Franchot?
June 28th, 2018 at 6:01 pm
Barry I read a bio of William, and at this stage he had gone from leading man at Warners to much smaller roles. From here on out he would be the lead only in B movies.
June 28th, 2018 at 6:03 pm
Thanks, Dan.
June 28th, 2018 at 6:27 pm
In the early 40s most of William’s work was for the Lone Wolf series. He died in 1948.
After his movie career petered out, Franchot Tone went into TV, where he was active until the mid to late 60s, including an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE in 1961. He died in 1968.
June 28th, 2018 at 6:41 pm
I just read an interesting note saying this film was an attempt to cash in on the success of Destry Rides Again, for which Harold Shumate was a preproduction writer. He doesn’t have a screen credit.
June 28th, 2018 at 7:34 pm
Entertaining film that wisely takes a note from Destry and plays to the central conceit of the story to good effect.
Tone certainly went down from leading man, but like Melvin Douglas morphed into a first rate character actor. Tone and Douglas had always played both leads and second leads where William had been strictly a leading man early on. And frankly William’s life showed much more on his face than either Tone or Douglas did.
Tone and Douglas never worked exclusively in television, both men appeared in major films throughout their careers and worked in theater as well.
That said William made the most of those B films and seems to enjoyed Philo Vance and the Lone Wolf despite falling from A lead to B lead