Sing, Cowboy, Sing Review

Sing, Cowboy, Sing (1937)

Dir. Robert N. Bradbury

Starring: Tex Ritter

Tex Archer (Ritter) and his pal Duke arrive in town and witness bandits attacking a freight line. When they arrive in the nearby town, they got jobs performing in a local saloon owned by a judge, and get involved in the fight with the bandits.

The movie has a title card stating that it isn’t based on any actual people or events, but it contains a character named Judge Roy Dean that holds court in a saloon. The title card is obviously there to dissuade people from thinking that this has anything to do with Judge Roy Dean, a judge that held court in his saloon. This character is pretty frustrating because at first it seems that he is corrupt and working with the villains, but he’s actually just dumb.

This is a low budget poverty row western, and this isn’t a case where a film rises above its budget. The film is fairly mediocre, and kind of boring at parts. The film felt odd and disjointed, like there were scenes removed from it, but the version I watched was 59 minutes, which is was what IMDB and Wikipedia both list as the running time of the movie, and I doubt that there is anyone from the production that is still alive that could share information on whether or not there were scenes deleted from the movie. The story is simple enough, if a bit predictable and. But the songs are pretty good, and they are integrated well into the film, so it’s got that going for it. There’s a pretty good action scene near the end, and it features a crash by a horse drawn wagon that looked impressive and was most likely unplanned but integrated into the final film. It also features a decent fight scene between Ritter and Charles King, but it’s not as good as their fight from the one in Rollin’ Plains a year later.

Overall it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s not good either. I don’t know if I’d recommend it to anyone. Robert N. Bradbury made over 100 westerns in his career, including a lot of early John Wayne westerns, but this isn’t one of the good ones.