Amazon.com: John Wayne's road to stardom needed some giddyup in the early 1930s; after a leading-man turn in The Big Trail, he quickly fell into B-movie obscurity. While waiting to vault to first-tier status in 1939's Stagecoach, he honed his talent with a set of six B-Westerns at Warner Brothers, shot in 1932-33. The series allowed Warners to recycle footage (and plots) from a string of silent Westerns made with Ken Maynard, with the young Mr. Wayne stepping into Maynard's saddle. Ride Him, Cowboy is the best of these snappy little films (under an hour each), a very entertaining number in which Wayne is introduced to a feisty horse named, of all things, Duke. Duke would feature in the later films, as would Wayne's harmonica playing. The movie has some wild stunt riding and some very amusing dialogue (someone urges a pokey storyteller, "Skip that part and get down to bedrock"). And for a cheap B-movie, there's some exceptionally inventive camerawork by Ted McCord, who would go on to shoot The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and East of Eden.
Wayne, 25 years old, plays the same naively heroic hero in each of the six films. He's lean and handsome and not yet grown into his talent. But you can see how much the camera likes him--as his future director Howard Hawks might have put it--and how much that famous stride is already coming into step. --Robert Horton
Excellent B-Western It'd be hard to argue that this is a western equal to THE SEARCHERS or STAGECOACH, but as a B-western, it's one of the best I've seen. Compared to Wayne's Lone Star films, RIDE HIM, COWBOY is a great picture. This is largely due to the photography and camerawork. There are a couple of really outstanding dolly shots (especially the first shots of the outdoor trial and the meeting of the men after the trial). The photography in the desert is also very nicely done. Whereas some of Wayne's early films have a very low-budget, backlot feel, RIDE HIM, COWBOY makes good use of location photography (which was at least in part recycled from an earlier silent film) to maximize the naturalism of the setting, if not the story.
The story, however, could stand improvement. You really have to suspend disbelief even more than usual for a B-western. Still, most of these early westerns aren't made to withstand logical scrutiny. And this film has decent acting (again, for a B-western). Otis Harlan as Judge Necktie Jones delivers a particularly entertaining performance. Wayne projects confidence when delivering his lines as well.
I don't know if this is the same print that appears on the Triple Feature DVD of RIDE HIM, COWBOY, HAUNTED GOLD, and THE BIG STAMPEDE. If so, it makes more sense to buy the Triple Feature and get 2 more films for a couple of dollars more. But the Triple Feature DVDs are double-sided, and from the looks of the product image, this disc is one-sided. So if you have an aversion to double-sided discs, then avoid the Triple Feature DVDs.
A Quickie from Vitagraph Pictures! I've always considered it very strange why Wayne's westerns of the 1930's are not given the same sort of revered status that other western stars like Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers received. Sure they're B movies but so were the films by Cassidy and Rogers. They might not have been as good from a pure technical standpoint, but they weren't awful either.
This was released by Vitagraph pictures which quite frankly was a new one one me. I cannot find anything from this company after 1933 so they obviously were not around very long. But this is actually a pretty well plotted starring vehicle for Wayne as he stars as John Drury who sets out to track down a villian known as the Hawk with the aid of Henry Sims. Well Sims turns out to be the Hawk himself and soon fraoms Drury for murder. This film would mark the first time that Wayne rode "Duke" the devil horse. A good little film although quite rough from a visual and sound standpoint. Decent action.
The "Duke's" First Starring "B" Western John Wayne's first starring "B" Western and the first of a series of six made by Warner Bros. may be the best of his "B" Western output. Good direction and production make this one and the entire series a good one. The studio dressed him like Ken Maynard and put him on a horse similar to Tarzan, so they could use action footage from Maynard's old films. "Ride Him Cowboy," for instance is a remake of the 1926 "The Unknown Cavalier."
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