The Three Mesquiteers is such a steady programmer of a franchise, there is usually nothing of particular note to say before any given entry. Hit the Saddle is different, in post-1937 retrospect, when one peruses the cast list…So let’s do that.
Let’s see, we got our regulars, Bob Livingston as Stony Brooke, Ray Corrigan as Tucson Smith, and Max Terhune as Lullaby Joslin – together, the Three Mesquiteers. Okay, nothing special there…
We also got noteworthy B-movie director J. P. McGowan playing villainous rancher (or in Mesquiteer terms, simply any rancher) Rance McGowan. Hmm, still not unique enough.
Then there’s Harry Tenbrook as McGowan’s henchman Harvey, and Ed Cassidy as “the Sheriff.” I’m starting to wonder what I was so excited about.
There’s also today’s disposable love interest, Rita, as played by Rita Cansino. Okay, still noth-
“Rita Cansino” was Rita Hayworth’s birth name! Rita Hayworth is in this! The sexiest lady ever on pre-Marilyn Monroe Earth! Gilda! So for the third (and sadly, probably final) time in this blog’s existence, I get to break out my favorite image of all, which neatly sums up what I love about Hit the Saddle. Mmm…
What’s that? Oh right, I guess I better discuss the movie too. Just what is Evil Rancher (er, I mean, McGowan) up to?
Rustlin’ up wild horses, that’s what. Oh, the dartardliness! But it’s illegal in “this state,” whatever union the Mesquiteers call homestead. And the Sheriff’s been hassling McGowan about his horse theft. So McGowan determines to sway public opinion against wild horses, in a politically deviant way which makes me think they’re in Arizona. To that end, he’ll nightly paint his own angry horses to look wild, and let ‘em stampede all over the freaking place.
McGowan might also go ahead and murder the Sheriff, which is really all he needed to do in the first place. He also determines to raise a ruckus with his other three enemies – the Three Mesquiteers. Why are they his opponents? (They ain’t law, after all.) Well, because they’re the heroes, and thus contractually obligated to stop villainy in all its nefarious forms.
The Mesquiteers, meanwhile, have trouble of their own: Rita Hayworth. Whoo! Naturally, Stony shall be smitten with her, as the entry’s traditional young lady – more specifically, the first genuinely attractive female in the franchise. But Tucson and Lullaby, damn their chafed hides, are suddenly against Stony’s characteristic man-whore ways. Why now, when this never bothered them before? Well, I’m not one to scan westerns for the supposed “homosexual context” some wags think form the entire genre, but I cannot help but notice the townsfolk’s dialogue about how “close” the Mesquiteers are, like “Siamese triplets” – joined where exactly? Sorry to say, but I’m afraid Tucson and Lullaby’ve been Brokeback-ing it up over at their Ranch of Moral Righteousness. As such, they sure as Tabasco sauce cannot let Stony (whose name now takes on awkward subtexts) claim Rita Hayworth as his beard! (Oh right, and if Stony marries Rita – as he fully intends to do – it’ll deeply challenge the “status quo is god” equilibrium of the franchise…Not to mention Hayworth’s about to go over to Columbia and have a career.)
An example of Rita’s dire, super-sexy influence: Stony actually sings with her. For a series I’d pegged as a “singin’ cowboy” product, this is the first actual singin’ a cowboy does! Someone in the saloon audience even pegs Stony as a “singin’ cowboy,” meaning the term had taken on a certain camp value by 1937.
Them’s fightin’ words! One false statement in a western saloon, and a stunt sequence is bound to break out, forcing the proprietor to thus reinvest in a full stock of breakaway chairs.
This donnybrook ends in a moment that is more “Mel Brooks” than real western, as Lullaby trots his horse right into the bar. (The bartender asks “Why the long face?”…No, actually, he doesn’t.) It turns out most of the men present are McGowan’s horse-thieven’ nogoodniks. Lullaby, mad over this, actually has them swear allegiance to the Savage Lord of the Wild Horses. I am dead serious, he has them chant something out of the hazing process in Animal House. (This is “comic relief,” in case you weren’t sure.)
Newspapers spin up at us – One of these days, this old cliché’s gonna destroy my flat screen. We learn volatile “wild” horses are running amok throughout the stock footage. The public demands a recall of explosive pintos. Heh heh. Really, though, they want this animal’s endangered status lifted, so they can murder them, like so many Palinites.
Oh right, and McGowan’s best horse, Volcano, has killed the Sheriff.
Thus Tucson is randomly anointed the new sheriff. Thus the Mesquiteers go out on a horse hunt, just as they would have done anyway, setting their sights on a particularly noble beast (above). The film’s dramatic focus becomes clearer, as Stony and Tucson grow at odds over the combined issues of horses and Hayworth – there’s some artless symbolism here connecting Rita Hayworth with this pinto, which is something I’d rather not delve into. As if to answer my own concern about the Mesquiteers’…leanings, Lullaby chimes in with reference to his three ex-wives. In a “joke,” he quips about having murdered all three of them and – Oh dear God!
Our boys are able to capture the horse-culprit in a horse-rope. Tucson intends to horse-execute it, but Stony suggests bringing it into town for a horse-trial. Stony’s reasoning, which is infinitely clear, is that the Sheriff was horse-killed by a horse with horseshoes. Tucson is pigheadedly opposed to this horse-sense, entirely because he’s mad about Hayworth. Seriously, what’s his problem?!
I mean, I know that image is blurry and unclear (these ain’t the world’s greatest DVDs), but look at her! Stony is about to marry the sexiest, most attractive woman of her generation, and his presumably noble friends are scheming an elaborate cock-block. Is that the Code of the West? No. Is it any man’s code? It shouldn’t be. How can this movie celebrate Tucson’s and Lullaby’s bitchy plans to destroy a marriage in its infancy, ruining Rita’s life in the process, while it simultaneously vilifies McGowan for stealing mares? Eh, because his hat is black.
(Meanwhile, the horse-suspect gets a horse-stay of horse-execution for one horse-night on the grounds that Stony was able to make it horse-calm.)
AAAAEEEYYIIIEEEEE!
Oh dear. I’m sorry for springing the hideous Elmer on you without warning, but that’s what the movie did to me! Rounding out a little running time that couldn’t be filled with horses (or better, Rita), Lullaby’s ventriloquist puppet interrupts him at the bar, lashing out with a tea-totaling anti-booze diatribe the likes of which had been made illegal in the U.S. since 1933. More so, this isn’t Lullaby playing a “gag”; he either genuinely suffers from schizophrenia, or Elmer is alive. It is very disturbing.
Elmer is returned forcefully back from whence he came, as Lullaby proceeds to charm us further as he breaks forcefully into Rita’s dressing room. Why does this movie paint her as the evil one? Cooties, maybe, seeing as the prime audience in 1937 was preteen “gee whiz” lads. Lullaby tells Rita some straight-up lies (our hero) about what marriage to Stony will entail – basically, he makes matrimony sound one-sided in favor of the husband, just like…okay, that is pretty accurate for the 30s.
Having bought Lullaby’s lies without question, Rita returns her ring to Stony, and heads right off to New York City right then and there. Stony can’t even get a word in. What a waste!
Freed of one nag, in Tucson’s tactful assessment, Stony rushes off to save another nag: the pinto. He rides it back into the badlands, townsfolk in hot pursuit in the closest a western can come to the torch-wielding mobs from Universal. But Stony is rescued by McGowan, who’s decided to break his longstanding plot absence in order to shoot his own successful scheme right in the foot. He takes Stony back to his ranch, for no reason, where Stony realizes the henchmen are actively painting McGowan’s horses. But Stony is as thoughtless as McGowan is, as he up and blurts out this realization right in McGowan’s face. So Stony has no one to blame but himself for winding up tied to a stake in the desert, as McGowan plots to have his loco horse Volcano do him in.
This is now when Stony’s loyal wild pinto gallops to the rescue. The two horses actually do battle with each other, like so many kaiju! Yes, this bizarre distraction is like something out of a Japanese monster movie!
Tucson and Lullaby arrive and free Stony. Quick dialogue between them settles all the conflict re: horses and 1940s sex symbols. Lullaby even feigns death (all he knows how to do is lie, possibly at the behest of his demonic doll), all in a devious ploy to get Stony and Tucson to “kiss and make up.” Really, we’re one thumpa-thumpa soundtrack from things going wildly off track, but innocence is saved from this sexual deviancy with the promise of violence. McGowan’s men ride in a-firin’. One standard climactic shootout later, and our heroes are triumphant, all the bad men have died screaming, and the one horse all this has been over gets to roam free.
Some of the worse elements of The Three Mesquiteers make themselves known here: strange character motivation and often hole-ridden plotting, overreliance on formula and plenty of immoral actions from our “heroes.” The one thing, the one thing saving Hit the Saddle from the mire is Rita Hayworth, naturally. She’s onscreen for something like 7 minutes, and gets to dance around for a bit. Actually, leave it to The Three Mesquiteers to squander Rita Hayworth (or Cansino, as she was then). No one was to realize her sex goddess wiles until she joined Columbia later that year. I mean, hell, Blondie on a Budget used her more wisely! So did that fucking Charlie Chan in Egypt, which is among the worst things I’ve experienced. But so be it, at least I got to see Ms. Hayworth one final time. Now I bid her a sad farewell, and return to my regularly scheduled westerns…
Related posts:
• No. 1 The Three Mesquiteers (1936)
• No. 3 Roarin’ Lead (1936)
• No. 4 Riders of the Whistling Skull (1937)
• No. 6 Gunsmoke Ranch (1937)
• No. 7 Come On, Cowboys! (1937)
• No. 8 Range Defenders (1937)
• No. 9 Heart of the Rockies (1937)
• No. 10 The Trigger Trio (1937)
• No. 13 Call of the Mesquiteers (1938)
• No. 14 Outlaws of Sonora (1938)
• No. 19 Santa Fe Stampede (1938)
• Nos. 29 – 38 (1940 – 1941)
• No. 35 Prairie Pioneers (1941)
• Nos. 39 – 51 (1941 – 1943)
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