Director: Albert Herman
Year: 1940
Rating: 6.0
One film genre that will probably never make a comeback is that of the Singing
Cowboy. Almost from the inception of sound in film, cowboys began to sing
in film. These were almost all B films produced by Monogram or other budget
companies but they were for about 15 years immensely popular and some of
the actors/singers became huge stars. A couple hundred of these films were
made and a lot of them are up on YouTube. One of the very first might surprise
you - John Wayne as Singin' Sandy Saunders in the 1934 Riders of Destiny.
Of course Wayne could not sing a lick and he was dubbed - but he became so
embarrassed when people asked him to sing that he told the film company that
he would not do any more though he was to do one more called Lawless Range
in 1935. It was probably a good decision as I have heard his career turned
out all right. After Wayne wisely bowed out Monogram looked for another singer
and found one in a singer who could not initially act - Gene Autrey who went
on to become one of the biggest stars in films and to mass a huge fortune
- he owned the Los Angeles Angel baseball team.