Sat 10 Jan 2009
Western movie review: DAWN ON THE GREAT DIVIDE (1942).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[6] Comments
DAWN ON THE GREAT DIVIDE. Monogram, 1942. Buck Jones, Mona Barrie, Raymond Hatton, Rex Bell, Tristram Coffin, Lee Shumway, Roy Barcroft, Harry Woods. Screenwriter: Adele Buffington; based on the story “Wheels of Fire,” by James Oliver Curwood. Director: Howard Bretherton.
The movie’s only 63 minutes long, about the same as every other B-western made in the 1940s, but the budget for Dawn on the Great Divide has to have been higher than most of them. The full cast, if not in the thousands, runs to nearly 40 in all, and the re-creation of a wagon train heading west, headed by Buck Roberts (Buck Jones), is nicely done in authentic-looking detail.
In some ways, this might even be considered a forerunner of the TV series called Wagon Train that came along much later. Each group of travelers has their own story, and not all of them turn out to be happy ones.
Unfortunately there’s not time enough to tell all of them, but Buck certainly has his hands full as he does his best to deal with them. The greatest obstacle in their path, however, is the gang of crooks waiting for them at Beaver Lake, if they can only get there.
Some sources say that this movie was meant to be part of Monogram’s “Rough Riders” series (Buck Jones, Raymond Hatton & Rex Bell), and so it says on the DVD case, but there’s no indication of it anywhere in the on-screen credits.
Sad to say, this was Buck Jones’ last movie. It ends with him heading out with the wagons, but saying to Sadie Rand (Mona Barrie) that maybe he ought to settle down, and aw shucks, ma’am, maybe she wouldn’t mind waiting for him until he heads back that way again.
But before the movie was even released, Buck Jones was one of the hundreds who perished in a notorious fire at the Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston late in November 1942 while he was on a publicity tour for Monogram Pictures.
He was 50 years old when he died, and as I watched the movie, I saw some resemblances between him and Randolph Scott as he appeared in his later westerns: a bit haggard, but rugged and solid, and very much a man of the west. I’m also glad that I didn’t realize that this was his last movie as I was watching. It’s a fine tribute to his memory, but there are times like this that you prefer not knowing.
January 10th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I really liked this movie. It’s got a great cast. It’s intriguing to think about the films Buck Jones might have made if he’d lived. I agree that he could well have been a forerunner to the sort of parts that Randolph Scott and John Wayne played in the late Forties and Fifties. Buck is also in one of my favorite serials, RIDERS OF DEATH VALLEY. I’m currently watching a serial of his called GORDON OF GHOST CITY.
January 10th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
In 1980 I bought my first vcr, a top loading beta machine. Blank tapes were expensive; I remember spending $20.00 each. Commercially released video tapes were just too expensive to buy for your film library, prices often $80.00 or more. That’s why so many film lovers rented from the thousands of mom and pop video stores.
I rapidly discovered the private sellers who were selling B western video tapes for alot cheaper prices, one of the first I obtained was GORDON OF GHOST CITY. Buck Jones became a favorite of mine and a friend of mine, Harry Noble, used to drive down from north Jersey to Trenton in order to see his childhood hero. As a young man he saw the serial in the theater and we watched a couple chapters each week until the serial ended. For years he hunted for a copy and finally found one. The production values of the Buck Jones movies were on a higher level than the typical B western and it’s obvious
January 12th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
James and Walker
Walter Albert reviewed Unknown Valley (1933), one of Buck Jones’ earlier movies here on the blog at https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=864 .
This is the first one of his that I’ve been able to see since, and as my review should have said, I was impressed. I’ll be looking for more of his films, that’s for sure.
I don’t know if he will surpass The Durango Kid as my favorite cowboy star, though. It’s hard to displace a childhood favorite.
I hadn’t realized that Buck Jones also did serial westerns. Two more to be added to my Must See list. Thanks, guys!
— Steve
January 12th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I was the guy who loaned Harry Noble my VHS copy of GORDON OF GHOST CITY so that he could finally see those last couple chapters.
Buck’s other serials were THE RED RIDER (1934, based on a W. C. Tuttle novel serialized in ADVENTURE MAGAZINE), THE ROARING WEST (1935, based on an Ed Earl Repp story), THE PHANTOM RIDER (1936), and WHITE EAGLE (1941, no relation to his 1932 feature film with the same title).
January 12th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
OK, four more serials. Thanks, Ed. I’m learning!
— Steve
February 3rd, 2009 at 4:36 am
Buck’s career goes back to the silents where he even made a comedy with John Ford. From all I’ve read of him he seems to have been a great favorite with everyone he worked with. I can still recall the first comic book I ever bought was a Dell Four Color Buck Jones comic. Another great Buck fan was Bill Cosby who even did a routine about Buck’s films.
One bit of trivia, Rod Cameron got his start as Buck’s stand in and stuntman, and I believe it was Buck who pushed him in front of the camera as an actor in Riders of Death Valley, known as the Million Dollar Serial for both the production and the cast that included Leo G.Carillo, Charles Bickford, and Lon Chaney Jr. Though they were made on the cheap the Rough Rider films Buck did teamed with Tim McCoy and Hoot Gibson are also fun. He even did a few non western talkies that show up on TCM from time to time. He’s probably been the hardest of the big western stars to collect, but more of his films are starting to show up at various sites, and almost all of them are worth seeing. His persona was in many ways a forerunner of the kind of films Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea would later do. Unlike many of the films of the period you seldom have to park your critical facilities or rely on nostalgia in order to enjoy one of Buck’s films. Many of them are still entertaining, and Buck is a screen natural.