User Reviews

Like a lot of Gene Autry's pictures, this one opens with Gene on horseback, singing along with his backup musicians (this time the Colorado Hillbillies) and Smiley Burnette alongside. Though Autry always portrayed the hero in his pictures, the passage of decades since he was a major star often reveal that he was sometimes on the wrong side of progress as well. This time, Gene's a horse trader up against a new fangled contraption called a tractor, as villain Thornton's (Ivan Miller) Farming Equipment Company uses the old foreclosure scheme to call in it's loans against local farmers.

For a picture that comes in under an hour, there sure are quite a few musical interludes along the way with a whole host of singing groups. Besides the Hillbillies, there's also The Stafford Sisters and a comical looking group called the Maple City Four. Personally, I got a kick out of the singer on banjo sporting the Beatles haircut some twenty five years before the Fab Four hit the scene.

Storywise, Gene's put in an awkward position when his voice is broadcast on Radio KLD making it look like he's promoting the Mammoth Tractor Company. When the area farmers start to get their late payment notices, it looks like Gene had a hand in backing the crooked finance company in cahoots with Thornton. This will all get set right by the end of the story, with Gene even overlooking the fact that Miss Sally Dawson (Helen Valkis) played him for a chump, even if unknowingly.

As a Western movie fan, I had to do a double take when I saw the name Dick Weston in the opening credits. Try as I might, it was difficult to pick him out in one of the singing groups, but I think I finally got a glimpse of him. Right after this picture, Republic gave him the name Roy Rogers in his very first starring role, "Under Western Stars".

Say, keep your eyes peeled in an early scene for a gas pump with a Mobilgas logo and a picture of the Texaco flying horse. That was kind of cool and it hung around on screen for a while making me wonder if it was an example of early product placement in film. Another noteworthy visual occurred later on in the picture when a series of over-sized posters came into view, one of which featured another cowboy film star, Johnny Mack Brown.

"The Old Barn Dance" was originally released back in 1938.

Anyway - As the story goes - Gene Autry and his friends run a horse-selling business that is threatened by a new tractor company that's selling their equipment to the local farmers by touting the virtues of tractors over horses. With his business struggling, Autry takes a job singing on a local radio program that he finds out later on is sponsored by the same tractor company he's competing with.

The Old Barn Dance (1938), another very good Echo Bridge ex-16mm DVD, release finds Gene Autry actively promoting horses over tractors for farm use. In fact the tractor people are the villains, the cowboys who capture wild horses and auction them at inflated prices to dirt-poor homesteaders, the heroes.

At least the story runs unexpectedly true-to-life, even if the script's sympathies are oddly misplaced. Gene carries on as if cowboys are just naturally salt-of-the-earth and that the use of animals as beasts-of-burden is a gift of God, while on the other hand, tractors of course are instruments of the devil.

The lovely Helen Valkis and young Sammy McKim help Gene carry on with this illusion - which is not by any means the only odd and inconsistent factor in Bernard McConville's misguided script that admirably succeeds in successfully pandering to rural prejudices.

Like most Gene Autry films, this one follows a standard formula. Gene sings, his backup band sings and Smiley Burnett sings. In addition, Gene retains his squeaky-clean image as an all-around nice guy-- though the ending DID catch me by surprise because instead of shooting the gun out of a bad guy's hand or just punching his lights out, he actually shoots and kills the guy--though he certainly DID have it coming and it was either him or Gene!

The film begins with Gene and the boys coming into a town to sell horses at a barn dance they'll put on for the community. Despite all the great singing, however, the residents don't buy a single horse because the town's gone crazy for the new-fangled tractors. Like so many Autry films, this one is set in the present day--with cars, telephones and tractors! Now without income, Gene agrees to bring his musical show to the radio--unaware that the unscrupulous lady in charge of the station will use this to sell MORE tractors. To make things worse, the guy who owns the tractor company is a real creep and intends to foreclose on all the farmers and taking them for everything he can get. When Gene learns he's been duped, he then refuses to make more broadcasts. However, this doesn't dissuade the lady nor the evil tractor salesman and it's ultimately up to Gene and the gang to dispense some good old fashioned cowboy justice.

Overall, this is yet another pleasant Gene Autry outing--about average but improved with some nice singing and the violent finale.