Twenty-five-year-old John Wayne saddles up in three of six early 1930s shoot-'em-ups made for Warner Bros. and previously filmed with silent-screen cowboy Ken Maynard. The Big Stampede pits Wayne against a cattle baron (Noah Beery) heaping a load of misery on new ranchers. Haunted Gold unravels the mystery of an abandoned gold mine lying beneath a ghost town. Ride Him?? Cowboy finds drifter Wayne rescuing a spirited horse?? tracking a notorious killer called The Hawk...and falling under suspicion of being the infamous outlaw. Billed with Wayne in each of the three films is the white stallion Duke (chosen to match Maynard's horse in intercut footage from the earlier films). Ride him?? John!
]]>Amazon.comJohn Wayne's"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. These snappy little films (under an hour each) are contained on two Warners DVDs; this one has the first three pictures in the series. Ride Him?? Cowboy is the best of the batch?? 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?? "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.McCord also shot The Big Stamp