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MOVIE CRAZY: The "B" Western Wing of the Toronto Serial Society is indebted to Don Miller for pointing the way to a thoroughly enjoyable movie experience at a recent screening session, Because, it was in his new book, Hollywood Corral, that Don mentioned a Charles Starrett western called Two Fisted Sheriff (Columbia, 1937) which featured a heavy played by Allan Sears. Now, Sears was an unknown quantity to us, so we had to take a look, Interestingly enough, Sears, as an authentic crazy named Laughing Bill Slagg, doesn't show up until the last half of the movie which, up to that point, is your average enjoyable Charles Starrett "B" western, But, the moment that Sears appears on the screen, looking like a cross between Lon Chaney in West of Zanzibar and Boris Karloff in The Lost Patrol, the movie suddenly becomes something entirely different as Sears projects an unsettling brand of screen madness,
Sears, incidentally, also appeared in Trapped (Columbia, 1937) and Cattle Raiders (Columbia, 1938), both with Starrett; Revenge Rider and Justice Of The Range, both 1935 Columbia releases with Tim McCoy, and Singing Vagabond (Republic, 1935) with Gene Autry. Earlier, he appeared in Secrets, a 1933 melodrama directed by Frank Borzage and starring Mary Pickford and Leslie Howard,
Don's Hollywood Corral inspired another choice for our session--The Thrill Hunter, a 1933 Columbia directed by George B, Seitz and starring Buck Jones in a role that, for most of the film, definitely went against all the accepted (and usually inaccurate) cliches about "B" westerns. In fact, the next guy who talks disparagingly about the movie cowboy kissing his horse and other such canards should be forced to watch The Thrill Hunter which spoofs almost everything Buck Jones usually represented on the screen,
Jones portrays Buck Crosby, a braggart and a downright liar whose claims of sundry aviation, auto-racing and western heroics lead a movie company to sign him up as its new leading man. There are some priceless moments, with Jones playing the role to the hilt, but none more priceless than the scene in which a group of scruffy cowboy extras give Buck and his brand-new moviecowboy finery several loud, moist razzberries and the mocking cry, in unison, “Our hero!"
Another Buck Jones western with a movie background that I'd like to see is Hollywood Roundup (Columbia, 1937) in which he portrays Buck Kennedy, cowboy stuntman and double for a conceited western star played by Grant Withers, Maybe next time.
Getting back to our last session, we also saw a 1944 Pete Smith Specialties short called Movie Pests in which Dave O'Brien and company demonstrate the ways in which thoughtless numbskulls can ruin other theatre patrons’ enjoyment of films, Clyde Gilmour of The Toronto Star has often written caustically of such clods and Movie Pests, which received an Oscar nomination, is a film right in keeping with his sentiments,