Director: Derwin Abrahams
Year:  1946
Rating: 5.0

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One film genre that has vanished - and some may say thank goodness but I quite like the music - is the Singing Cowboy. Back in the 1930's and 40's there were a boatload of B Westerns produced in which music was a large element. What more could an audience want than galloping horses, some six gun shootouts and a bit of crooning. The music would be Western Country in style and two of the biggest stars were Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers. Tex Ritter did some as well.


The star of this film which is part of the Durango Kid series was Charles Starrett who no doubt audiences have long forgotten for the most part. He made over 130 Westerns but all of the B film ilk and never had the chance really to move into the A films like John Wayne was able to. Very early on in his career he was typecast as a Western actor and nothing he could say would change that. Columbia Pictures signed him up to a number of contracts always knocking off one Western after another. 65 of these was as the Durango Kid beginning in 1940 and going till 1952 when Starrett retired his spurs.


Starrett was not a singer so they brought in others who were. The Sons of the Pioneers who had been associated with Roy Rogers were in many of the early ones and then in 1946 Smiley Burnette became the comic sidekick. But in reality Burnette was more than the sidekick off the screen. He was a prolific song writer of which many made it to the films and a fine singer which he often did - in this film backed up by the Georgia Crackers. Earlier in his career he had been the sidekick to Gene Autrey.


This is my first Durango Kid film. Low budget obviously and a simple plot but pleasant enough. Lots of riding around which these B Westerns specialized in. In a listing I saw from someone who actually had the fortitude to watch all the Durango Kid films - he is now residing in a mental institution I assume - he ranked all the films and this one came in very close to the worst - so maybe some of the others I have are better (a DVD package of 10 films). For some reason that I didn't really get the Durango Kid has two identities - one as the straight shooter Steve and then as the masked Durango Kid who metes out justice - but then so does Steve. Here we have an old timer prospector who comes across the hiding place of Santa Anna's lost gold and some no goodniks are out to get it. Durango and Steve try and help him.