Episode 300: The Gene Autry Show – “Gun Powder Range” (October 29, 1950)

What I watched: The fifteenth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “Gun Powder Range” was directed by George Archainbaud and written by Kenneth Perkins, with guest stars Gail Davis, Dick Jones, George J. Lewis, and Kenneth MacDonald. The episode originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, October 8, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.

What happened: We’re introduced to Jim (Jones), a dishwasher at a picturesque cafe who wants to be a “bad man” and carries a gun. After showing off his sharpshooting skills, a man from the “Red Wolf Bunch” named Chipote (Lewis) expresses interest in having Jim (Davis) join his gang. His sister Millie, a waitress at the cafe, tries to warn him about getting involved with a bad crowd. He gets passers by to bet on whether or not Jim can shoot 4 out of 5 silver dollars out of the air.

Gene and Pat ride into town, looking for the waitress, who has written him a letter. Along the way they run into a bank raid, and get into a shootout. One of the bad guys falls off a cliff and surely dies. The sheriff, Jack (MacDonald), suspects that the Red Wolf gang planned the raid, and used Tim’s shooting show as a distraction. The sister protests his innocence, but Jack arrests him anyways. Tim puts up a fight and escapes.

Gene really missed his calling as a hockey enforcer.

Millie meets up with Gene, and we learn that she wrote him a letter to try to talk some sense into the adventure-hungry Tim. Gene hasn’t seen him since he was 5, but he is very persuasive. Gene and Pat catch up with Tim entering a cabin in the wilderness. They decide to teach Tim “what a bad man’s life is really like”, and Pat is very excited about getting to be evil for a change. Nonetheless, Tim quickly shoots off his hat.

Gene sneaks up behind Tim, but doesn’t draw on him. He claims to be a member of the Red Wolves, looking to recruit him, but warns that outlaws’ lives are lonely and dangerous. Pat bumbles in, acting like he’s shooting someone. He’s already notched his gun to suggest that he’s killed almost a dozen men this season. Tim thinks this is very cool and agrees to walk the “outlaw’s trail” with them. Tim’s enchantment quickly dries up after hiking up a harsh trail with no water, in the name of trying to avoid the law. Gene sings about being in the middle of the desert without a drop to drink. Sounds like my dating life.

Meanwhile, the real Red Wolves find out that someone else is going around using their water holes and claiming that they’re with them. Tim finds two famished men by the side of the road, and gives them his canteen of water. After he leaves, the Red Wolves get into a shootout with the two men and kill them. Gene and Pat laugh at Tim’s generousity. Sheriff Jack find Tim’s canteen at the site of the shooting and assume he’s guilty. They arrest our fake outlaw trio, fooled by the notches on Pat’s gun. Gene knocks out the officer of the law and takes off.

Chipote arrives with one of his henchmen to testify against the remaining heroes, and the law makes like it’s going to hang Tim and Pat right there on the spot, until Gene comes back with the surviving desert rat, who says that Chipote is to blame. The bandit leader flees, but Gene chases him down and gets into a shootout. Eventually Chipote falls down trying to climb some rocks, leading to his capture. Tim has learned his lesson, but still seems pretty trigger-happy.

What I thought: This episode basically echoes the first Gene Autry episode I saw, “The Star Toter”. In that episode, Gene helps a young boy break away from the influence of his outlaw father. At the time I felt this was a refreshing change from the less character-focused Western stories I had been inured to from 50+ episodes of The Lone Ranger.

“Gun Powder Range” revisits this premise, but with an older boy and a more action-packed episode. Instead of a wayward child with torn loyalties, Tim is simply foolish, and needs to be “scared straight” by Gene and Pat. It’s a pretty thin story, but it does have some moments, especially when Pat tries to impersonate an outlaw (perhaps the first time he’s actually been funny.)

Again, we see that, while the story is ostensibly about the need to keep on the straight and narrow, the forces of law and order are not terribly reliable. One piece of false testimony is enough to get the sheriff’s men to almost string up a teenage boy on the spot. When I was watching this scene I assumed that Gene and Pat had arranged this impromptu execution as part of their lesson-teaching plan, but apparently the sheriff’s department really are just this bloodthirsty.

You can’t be an outlaw with a flowery shirt.

In the end, the day is saved, but Tim still seems pretty unbothered. Maybe not everyone can be perfectly redeemed, no matter how many times you try to scare them straight.

Coming up next: I’m going to be presenting the long-delayed 3rd Golden Potato Awards, but after that it’s the KFO gang to kick off the week with Halloween Eve. They probably won’t call it Devil’s Night.

Episode 289: The Gene Autry Show – “The Black Rider” (October 22, 1950)

What I watched: The fourteenth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “The Black Rider” was directed by Frank McDonald and written by Elizabeth Beecher, with guest stars Sheila Ryan, Tom London, and Don C. Harvey. The episode originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, October 8, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.

What happened: A rider dressed in black shoots a guy and drops a coin near his body. Gene comes across the body only a minute too late. The shooter, the Black Rider, is apparently well known in the town and no one can catch him. Gene is a friend of the old sheriff (London) at the town, called Golf Flats. One of the lunks, named Conlan (Harvey), around goes to visit a woman in black (Ryan), warning her that Gene is investigating the mysterious rider. However, when we see him Gene is just singing. Oh, Gene!

Gene doesn’t put too much effort into the lip-syncing here.

The Black Rider shoots at him, and Gene falls off his horse. Pat comes to the rescue with a hot pan of food, and shoots back at her. He hits her horse and she flees. In this episode, Pat doesn’t know Gene, or that he’s faking being killed. Pat says he’s a prospector who’s studying to be a detective, and is eager to tag along with Gene.

The Rider is off doing some more murders and tossing her coin onto the corpse. Seems like a good way to go broke. Pat and Gene are also onto the corpse, but assume that the Rider is a man. But it turns out that this guy isn’t dead, so she has to go back to stop him from talking. The Rider gets into some hijinx with Pat outside the cabin, and knocks him upside the head. Her accomplice then warns Pat not to go southwest, saying that the area is haunted.

Pat promptly wanders out there to look for his donkey, imitating his cries. The Black Rider comes out and shoots at him in the bushes, and he sees her face. When she takes off to do another murder, Pat takes after her. Gene confronts the accomplice, sensing his lies, and the two get into a donnybrook. The Black Rider shows up and shoots at Gene to allow Conlan to escape. Pat is eager to tell Gene who the Rider is, but he won’t listen. Pat’s habit of applying detective-y facial prosthetics isn’t helping.

The old sheriff is thinking about making a deal where he surrenders himself to the Rider in exchange for peace. Pat finally is able to tell Gene where the Rider is, although no who, and Gene takes off to the nicely—made stone cabin. Once there, he is promptly ambushed and held at gunpoint by the Rider and Conlan. Her identity is Sheila Dexter, the sister of an outlaw who was hung by the sheriff. She plans to hang Gene too. The Sheriff gets caught too and tied up to a tree. She’s suddenly into very elaborate ways of killing people.

Pat is still sneaking around, and Gene gives him some instructions to lasso the Rider. She’s captured fairly easily as Gene has another punch—out with Conlan, this time winning decisively. All’s well at the end, and Pat even has his donkey back.

What I thought: This edition of The Gene Autry Show is most notable for featuring a female villain in the eponymous Black Rider. She’s not the first we’ve seen, but usually in the kid Westerns women are there for the hero to chastely flirt with. There’s usually a nominal effort to show that the woman is tough and capable before having her play a supporting role in the hero’s story. Even if they are an antagonist, the odds are that they’ll be converted to the side of good by the end, or revealed as having been a heroine all along as in the Cisco Kid episode I watched recently.

Not Sheila Dexter, though. She’s a completely unrepentant killer, and is even the muscle of this episode’s two bad guys. (Although she isn’t really involved in the final fight, presumably to avoid the imagery of Gene Autry beating the crap out of a woman). She has a clear motivation in her brother’s death, but isn’t really treated as a tragic figure who might be redeemed through the hero’s love. Sheila Ryan is someone we’ve seen a couple times playing supporting roles on this type of show, and she seems to enjoy getting a chance to stretch her legs a bit more. (Plus, she’s hotter evil.)

Western fight choreographers sure loved their monkey flips.

There’s an interesting way in which Sheila almost loses her gender as the Black Rider. Pat refers to the Rider as “he” even when he knows the truth. No one seems to consider that the assassin could be anything but a man, but there’s no expression of shock or regret when they learn the Rider’s true identity. Rather than being a lesson about underestimating women, it’s as though Sheila puts on a cloak of masculinity that is as real as it is performative. This episode is also written by a woman, Elizabeth Beecher, which may have contributed to her portrayal.

And is it just me, or is Pat the real hero in this story? He discovers the truth of the Rider’s identity, rescues Gene, and takes down the lead villain with a lasso. All Gene does is get in a fistfight with a henchman. Perhaps because he’s a “lesser” man, Pat is treated as the appropriate adversary for a female villain, which ironically propels him towards the centre of the narrative. I’m usually annoyed by Pat’s antics more than anything, but I would definitely watch a show about him tracking down lady baddies through a mixture of doggedness and dumb luck.

Coming up next: We have an actual new show to watch in The Arthur Murray Party.

Episode 279: The Gene Autry Show – “The Lost Chance”

What I watched: The thirteenth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “The Lost Chance” was directed by Frank McDonald and written by Paul Gangelin, with guest stars Don Pietro, Kenne Duncan, and Zon Murray. The episode originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, October 15, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.

What happened: We open with a Mexican kid leading his donkey around, calling him “amigo” and otherwise being stereotypical. He notices a really sexy horse nearby, which is naturally Champ, with Gene looking on. The kid hops on the horse, but it won’t go. Gene finally interrupts him, and the kid introduces him as Pepito Garcia (Pietro). Pepito says that he normally hangs around in Arizona, but came to this area, known as Rock Bottom to look for gold. Pat arrives to do some coyote noises.

Amigo is the real star of the show.

The action kicks off with a chase passing our trio by. Pat and Gene join in the chase, shooting at a bunch of outlaws who are in turn shooting at a guy named Art Daly, the president of the Cattleman’s Association. Daly gets shot, and the outlaws get away. The culprits are apparently the Hanlon Gang, a local group of toughs known for going after big scores led by Bo Hanlon (Murray). Gene suspects that they had other motives for targeting Art, however.

In town, the sheriff deputizes everyone to go after the gang. Nice to know the rule of law is being followed. We learn that Gene is the secretary of the Cattleman’s Association, and Del Andrews (Duncan) is the treasurer. Very important political post, you see. A local guy starts harassing Pepito and Amigo, and Gene intervenes to punch him out. Pepito says he knows the location of the legendary Lost Chance gold strike, which only one man has ever found. Pepito heard it from his father Pedro. Of course, as the most extraneous character, Mr. Andrews is the villain, and we soon see him making a deal with Hanlon. He ordered the hit, and only wants the records of he Association.

Gene is singing about dating a Mexican woman. Pepito heads out with Amigo, looking for the gold mine, but gets confused by the reference to “a face in the sky.” Maybe the real treasure was God? When Gene and Pa go out looking for him, they come across a bank robbery, and foil it with some fast shooting. Gene catches Hanlon in the hand and chases him down. Hanlon gets away but Gene recovers his loot, including the Association records.

Pepito is still looking, and stumbles across Andrews and Hanlon meeting. They discover him, but realize they can’t kill him without alerting Gene. Andrews asks Pepito to find them the Lost Chance strike, threatening with shooting Amigo unless he complies. Gene and Pat even come across Andrews and Pepito, who say they’re looking for the lost burro. Gene is suspicious after the conversation, and doubles back to follow them.

Pepito finally sees the “face in the sky”, a nearby cliff face. In town, Gene has reviewed the records and found that the accounts are $40, 000 short. The bad guys start digging, and find a box, but all that’s in it is a letter calling them fools. One of the goons warns them that Autry is coming. They set an ambush, and start shooting at a wagon driven by Pepito. Gene springs to the rescue, and tells Pepito the lesson of the story: “Don’t follow foolish ideas, and try to get something for nothing.” But he is going to get the reward cash, which will be used to send him to school. Pat even found Amigo, and “Junior.” At least the burros can have sex on TV.

What I thought: This is the second episode of The Gene Autry Show we’ve seen that pairs Gene with a kid, after “The Star Toter..” It’s a smart idea: Gene’s persona, at least at this point in his career, was more grown-up than a lot of more conventional two-fisted Western heroes, but the show was still aimed primarily at a family audience. If The Lone Ranger was who you wanted to be, than Gene Autry was who you wanted to be your dad: kind, understanding, but still able to kick some ass. Having him act as a surrogate father figure allowed kids to imagine themselves in this fantasy.

However, in this case the characterization of the actual kid is where the whole idea falls apart. To put it bluntly, Pepito is annoying, a one-note character with some of the least convnicning kid acting you’ll see. The story also basically fixates on his Mexican-ness to the point where it’s basically his only personality trait, inflecting even his love of his burro Amigo. Even if kids wanted Gene Autry as their dad, it’s hard to imagine them wanting to be Pepito.

The episode as a whole has an unusually busy plot. We have an outlaw gang, a cattleman who’s secretly working with them, a murder, and a mythical gold mine. We’re just lucky Gene didn’t try to squeeze a romance in there. Ultimately, it makes for an episode that’s a bit of a muddle. If it weren’t for the seeming mandate for every one of these Western series’ scripts to include a bad guy in disguise, it probably wouldn’t have been better to just cut out the Cattlemen’s Association plot altogether.

“Say, you would tell me if you were a bad guy, right?”

As I write this I realize that it might sound silly for me to be doing story-doctoring on a kid’s show from 70 years ago. I sometimes worry that I’m being overly negative about these shows that I have for some reason committed myself to watching, scaring away whatever readership exists for writing about The Gene Autry Show. Well, so be it: I’ve always had trouble following the commonly-dispensed advice to “turn your brain off”, even when dealing with kid’s media.

To be sure, there are pleasures to be had here: Autry’s charisma and singing, and some decently-choreographed horse riding and fistfights. But after initially hoping that The Gene Autry Show would be a reprieve from the Lone Ranger formula, I’m frustrated to see a lot of the same plot tics in it and other Western series. I’m hoping that these shows still have some kind of surprise waiting for me, or at least something worth writing about.

Coming up next: It’s another helping of Jerry & Dean on The Colgate Comedy Hour.

Episode 271 – The Gene Autry Show – “Poisoned Waterhole”(October 8, 1950)

What I watched: The twelfth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “The Poisoned Watering Hole” was directed by Frank McDonald and written by Polly James, with guest stars Sheila Ryan, William Henry, Chief Thundercloud, and Leonard Penn. The episode originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, October 8, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.

What happened: Gene and Pat are on the road and come by a poisoned watering hole. They know it’s poison because they find a broken bottle marked “POISON.” Gene resolves to tell the sheriff, but they’re interrupted by an Indigenous dude shooting a bow and arrow at them. Gene gets the edge by climbing up a tree and clotheslining him. The guy turns out to be a friend of Gene, Chief Tehome (Thundercloud).

It turns out that there’s a dispute over the local land, with a railroad company wanting to obstruct the watering hole. Gene’s compass is also going screwy, leading Pat to try to explain magnetism to Chief Tehome. In town, Pat confronts the railroad men, and it immediately descends into fisticuffs. After beating them up, Gene rides off so that he can sing a song.

They ride over to Kate’s Boarding House, where a man is pouring poison into a flash. Gene senses trouble and heads in. In the meantime, Gene and Tehome are waiting outside the lodgings, trying to get a room. The bad guy is just wandering around with the poison bottle, and Pat spots it. He eavesdrops on a man and a woman while stealing the pie they have on a windowsill. The bad guys notice that someone’s been fooling around with the door, but Gene and Pat beat them up. Pat steps in a pie, but is able to reveal that the culprit is local chemist Paul Judd (Henry), despite seeming not to have a motive.

Not even going to try to judge if this is a culturally appropriate costume…

Gene poses as a client of Judd, getting ores assayed. Everyone takes turns looking into the microscope and learn that there’s a silver deposit that the railroad is trying to capture. Kate herself (Ryan) intrudes, but Gene easily grabs her gun. She’s married to Paul and is certain that he isn’t doing anything wrong, despite having done crimes in the past.

The crew rides to a watering hole. When Gene provides evidence that the company is up to no good, they flee, and he chases them down. He ends up lassoing one of the guys off his horse. In the meantime, Pat and Tehome get captured by a sheriff who blames them for the recent run of crimes. Tehome, of course, uses his tomahawk to drag the keys to the cell over to him. The security at these jails is terrible. They end up locking up the sheriff.

A whole bunch of bad guys, led by someone named Ben Craig (Penn), show up and confront Gene. Gene says that he’s already passed along the information to the district marshall. They shoot at Gene, and eventually corner him, but Pat intervenes with a lasso that he promptly trips over. The sheriff is convinced to change his tune after seeing letters on a horseshoe pointing to the rail company. In the end, Paul turns out to be innocent, having been tricked by Kate’s brother who said he was working an abandoned mine. Pat runs off to avoid being convicted for his theft of the pie.

What I thought: One of the unusual feelings you get when watching older media is seeing a trope or idea that you’ve only seen parodied or presented ironically before be used in all sincerity. This episode of The Gene Autry Show falls into a lot of that. “The Poisoned Waterhole” immediately conjures, at least for me, one of Woody from Toy Story‘s automatic lines, meant to be a parody of corny old Western shows just like, well, The Gene Autry Show. A lot of this episode feels like a stagey Western parody, from the giant “POISON” barrels to stealing pies off windowsills, but I’m sure that for the kids watching it the events were deathly serious.

This would seem to mark a significant shift from most of the previous episodes of The Gene Autry Show, which often saw Gene as a man situated in a community. Here, Gene and Pat are more like the Lone Ranger and Tonto or other archetypal wanderers. There’s a little more action, and a little less warmth. If I was a kid at the time, I would probably like this episode a lot more than something like “The Star Toter” but as an adult it feels disappointing to see Gene Autry losing a bit of what made it distinct. Hell, even the song feels out of place here.

One particular trope that perhaps hasn’t aged the best is the Native American character, Chief Tehome. Tehome and the Indigenous tribe are ostensibly on the good guys’ side here, fighting off an illegal incursion by greedy miners. Like The Lone Ranger, The Gene Autry Show avoids the more old-fashioned trope of Indigenous people as savage enemies and instead presents them as noble people abiding by treaties. Gene notes that the area has been calm “since the white people made peace with the Indians”, although I’m sure that Native Americans would have a slightly different interpretation of what happened.

The portrayal of Chief Tehome, however, suggests that he is anything but an agent in the story. Instead, he seems closer to Pat’s status, someone who is typically the but of the joke and needs to be rescued. He has the same simplistic English as Tonto, but at least Tonto sometimes gets to do something and doesn’t wear the costume designer’s best impression of an “Indian” outfit. Ultimately, Native land is just the spark for conflict between good and evil white men. Actor Chief Thundercloud, incidentally, was the first man to play Tonto on screen in two Lone Ranger film serials, although it’s unclear whether or not he was actually Indigenous.

Deconstructionists need something to deconstruct, and a lot of revisionist Westerns I love like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly probably couldn’t exist without a legion of straightforward Western stories full of purely good heroes, black-hearted villains, and meek Indians. But I do hope that the future of The Gene Autry Show doesn’t have that many poisoned waterholes in store for me.

Coming up next: Studio One takes us back to Europe with “The Spectre of Alexander Wolff”

Episode 262: The Gene Autry Show – “Six-Shooter Sweepstakes” (October 1, 1950)

What I watched: The eleventh episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “Six-Shooter Sweepstaeks” was directed by Frank McDonald and written by Norman S. Hall, with guest stars Jamel Frazier, Kenne Duncan, and Virginia Herrick.. The episde originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, October 1, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.

What happened: Gene Autry is out for a pleasant ride on Champ, but evil lurks, as two men are watching and swearing that they will take the horse, Team Rocket-style. Gene passes it off to Pat and new sidekick Corky (Frazier). My happiness at seeing a black character on one of these shows is slightly dented by Gene telling him “get the coonin’ out of you, boy.” The Fourth of July celebrations are approaching, and with them a big horse race. The plan is for Corky to ride Champ in the race, but there’s trouble, as Chuck Evans and a bunch of disreputable elements have come down from “Indian territory.”

Pat and Corky run into Chuck (Duncan) and his gang on the road, and banter a bit about the speed of their respective horses. Chuck challenges Pat to a race right now, with the ownership of the horses on the line. Corky knows this is a bad idea, but Pat agrees and signs the pink slips. Champ gets out to a quick lead, but stalls out, and Chuck’s palomino wins. Meanwhile, Gene is unconcernedly singing to Caroline (Herrick), who is the sheriff’s daughter or something.

Corky is still reflecting on the race, thinking that Champ was off and that someone interfered while Pat was signing the ownership papers. He spies on Chuck talking about putting a wire on champ to rig the race, but knocks over some pans n the way out, leading to a chase. He makes it back to Gene, while Pat gets caught trying to ease his way down a rock face in a comedic scene. They all meet up, and tell Gene that Evans cheated them.

What DO they do to horse thieves, anyway?

Caroline comes to report what’s happening in the town. Apparently the rest of the ton believes that Gene was robbed, and wants to form a posse and go after Chuck. “You know what we do with horse theives”, one says as Gene rides into town. He tries to calm people down, but Chuck calls him a coward and they fistfight.`Chuck threatens to sue Pat if Gene tries to take Champ back.

This takes us to the big horse race. Chuck is going around collecting bets on himself. Not sure how that works, but it still sounds better than DraftKings. Corky rides another choice against Champ, but loses. Corky rides back hurt, having been shot. While everyone else was distracted by the bread and circuses, Evans and his gang robbed the bank. Gene rides them down and jumps off his horse to beat up Chuck. He whistles for Champ, and he returns to him. Corky is happy despite his broken arm, and launches into his own version of the theme song of “Back in the Saddle Again.”

What I thought: The horse is an essential part of the mythology of the Western hero. In particular, a memorably-named horse seems to be a must-have accessory for Western heroes that appealed to children.: The Lone Ranger has Silver, The Cisco Kid has Diablo, and Gene Autry has Champ. Even their sidekicks have named horses. But despite the emphasis on the horses in marketing material, they haven’t really factored into the plots of the series that we’ve watched.

That changes in this episode of The Gene Autry Show. Much of the dialogue in this episode is about how amazing Champ is. Even when commanded by the villain, he’s able to beat any other horse. But Champ is really more of an object than a character. I had expected the plot resolution to be Champ rebelling and throwing his evil new owner, but this doesn’t materialize, as he is perfectly obedient to Chuck. Ultimately a horse is like a car, just a way to go fast that can be bought and sold.

“Say Pat, you think I could get your job?

The other character that gets an unexpected spotlight in this episode is Corky, the young black jockey. This is a one-off character, but he’s treated like a familiar part of the gag. A surprising amount of the plot is given over to Corky and Pat’s interactions with Chuck and the bandits, with Autry himself barely appearing in the first half of the episode. Corky almost becomes a substitute hero, proving himself more capable and intelligent than Pat. Ultimately, though, he still needs rescuing, passing the task over to the star of the show.

From a modern, representational level, the best thing that can be said about Corky is that he’s a black character on TV at a time when even depicting black people at all could prove controversial. Despite there being a long history of black people in the Old West, Westerns of this age were generally whitewashed. Gene using a racial slur in his first conversation with the kid does kind of take the wind out of any progressive sails here. Hollywood in the 1950s was a tough place to be a young black actor: Jamel Frazier, who played Corky, would only have one other screen credit, a decade later.

There’s a kind of strange legalism to how the plot unfolds. Even when there’s evidence that Champ as taken in a rigged race, Gene is reluctant to take him back by force. He calms down a mob in the town, and puts his trust in the courts. This seems to place the script in a corner: Gene can’t use force to resolve the dispute, but also has no legal evidence (and besides, this isn’t about to turn into a courtroom drama.) So the gangsters rob the bank, which doesn’t so much resolve the stolen horse plot as render it moot. Still, we get some fisticuffs and a lot of nice shots of horses running, and isn’t that what’s important?

Coming up next: TV’s most storied guessing game, What’s My Line, returns to the airwaves.

Episode 250: The Gene Autry Show – “The Devil’s Brand” (September 24, 1950)

What I watched: The tenth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “The Posse” was directed by George Archainbaud and written by Elizabeth Beecher, with guest stars Gail Davis, Wendy Waldron, Francis Ford and John Doucette. “The Devil’s Brand” originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, September 24, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.

What happened: Pat is spending a week on “KP’, slowly peeling potatoes. When Gene gets on him about the, he gives him DoubleMint gum. Okay, that was just the ad spot, but I do like that they start with a little 30-second skit. In the actual episode, Gene leads a trio down the road, singing a nice laid-back song about “The Navajo Trail.” His singing is abruptly cut off by a sniper shooting the guy to his right. Gene gives chase, but he gets mixed up and catches Pat instead.

Shoot, Gene! Shoot!

Gene apparently doesn’t know who Pat is this week, and immediately takes him for the murderer. Pat protests that he was just out hunting rabbits. He has a note from his boss which apparently clears him of murder. Gene takes Pat back to the Rocking ‘R’ Ranch where he’s working as a foreman. The killed man, Jed (Ford), was the owner of the ranch, and has left it to his niece Deborah, a “city slicker” from Fort Worth.

The murder turns out to be part of a plan to buy up ranches from just such bereaved relatives, carried out by two extremely gravelly-voiced men, Claggett (Doucette) and Spud. Claggett’s plan is to have his sister Nina (Davis) take Deborah’s place and sign the farm over. Sounds perfectly legal. His men accost Deborah (Waldron) when she gets off her stagecoach, first posing as hands and the Rocking R and then just punching her. Nina changes into her clothes and gets back aboard the stagecoach.

There’s a flaw in the plan, though, as it’s the same stage coach driver both times, an old-timer named Clem. When they realize this, Claggett’s men kill Clem, but not before he gasps out “blue” to jeans. Gene is immediately suspicious of Claggett’s offer to buy the ranch, although he buys the fake Deborah. Later that night, Spud pops in through the window and cracks a mirror over Gene’s head. Nina pours a whole jug of water over his head trying to wake him up. When he comes to, Gene wonders what’s happening, and the meaning of Clem’s last words “blue.” Through a few leaps of logic, they come to realize the truth, that the Deborah they know is an imposter.

There’s a comedic interlude where Pat finds a rabbit in his saddlebags. Gene goes to the sheriff for help. The plan is for him to confront Claggett, with Pat and the sheriff’s posse a distance behind him, following a trail of flour that Gene leaves behind him. Gene reaches the hideout, and sees the real Deborah sneaking out. He shoots the gun out of Spud’s hand and then takes aim at the whole operation. He hits Claggett with the strangely common flying clothesline and monkey flip. Claggett shoots Deborah in the arm, but it turns out to be Nina. The posse arrives to finish things off. Pat finds a mate for his rabbit, and all is well in the end.

What I thought: The strength of The Gene Autry Show‘s “mini-movie” format is that it allows the series to tell different types of stories. For instance, “The Devil’s Brand” definitely has a more serious tone than many prior episodes, starting off with a cold-blooded murder and ending with a woman being accidentally shot. We also see a different version of the character relationships, with Gene meeting Pat for the first time and initially not trusting him, instead of the two being already friends.

I’m not sure how necessary the clothes swap was to the plan.

Of course, even without a continuing story there was still a general tone to The Gene Autry Show to connect all the episodes. You’re not going to see Gene Autry’s version of The Wild Bunch. So while “The Devil’s Brand” may be relatively more serious and action-oriented, there’s still some comic relief, and a song to open things up. The series, and Autry’s personal brand, created a general window of tone which individual episodes fit at various spots within.

Gene and Pat weren’t the only commonplace actors in the series. “The Devil’s Brand” features a very similar cast to the previous episode with Davis, Ford, and Doucette all returning in chief supporting roles. We’ve seen The Lone Ranger use repeat actors in different roles, but not in back-to-back episodes like this. Most likely it was easy to film multiple episodes with the same cast close together, but you think they’d at least disperse them in the episode order. Still, the repeat cast didn’t disrupt my immersion (probably because it had been two months since I watched the last episode), and I was glad to see John Doucette again, even if he didn’t make as big as an impression as I’ve come to expect. These actors wouldn’t become as much a part of the ensemble as Pat and Gene, with Davis appearing in 15 of the 91 episodes and the rest fewer, but it’s still nice to see familiar faces. (After all, that’s what TV is all about.)

We’re also beginning to see some of the same tropes and archetypes repeating. In particular, The Gene Autry Show loves its young ranch heiresses, whether they be tough country girls as in “Blackwater Valley Feud” or out-of-their-element city slickers as here. Maybe this is just a convenient way to get female characters involved in the typically masculine world of the Old West. It also can create someone for Gene to sing love songs to, although that’s not the direction “The Devil’s Brand” goes in.

When I talk about repetition in series like this or The Lone Ranger, it’s not to denigrate them. (Well, maybe a little.) It’s hard to create thirty-odd original stories a season, and using common elements can help to create a sense of theme. What interests me is how different series in the same genre use the different commonplace characters and tropes. I’ll have to keep an eye out for comely ranch heiresses as I continue.

Coming up next: KFO pays tribute to the Buckeye State.

Episode 231: The Gene Autry Show – “Doublecross Valley” (September 10, 1950)

What I watched: The eighth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “Doublecross Valley” was directed by George Archainbaud and written by J. Benton Cheney, with guest stars Gail Davis, Harry Lauter, and Stanley Andrews. “Doublecross Valley” originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, September 10, 1950 on CBS, and is available to watch on the Internet Archive and Tubi.

What happened: We open with some action, as Judd Parker and his gang attacks a Union supply train and steal their gold away into the hills. They blow up some boulders to bury their stash. As is the way of things, Judd betrays his partners and shoots them so that he doesn’t have to split the gold.

Decades later, two men have heard the legend of the buried gold and are planning to buy the Triangle Ranch from Big Jim Watson (Andrews), where it is said to be located, by any means necessary. We finally get to Gene Autry, who in this episode is a sharp-dressed sheriff with a fiancee, Susan (Davis). She warns him that a man named Idaho is here with plans to shoot him. Gene intimidates Idaho, and when he finally tries to draw on him a stranger shoots at him. He introduces himself as Kent (Lsuyrt), a “naturalist”, and there’s a somewhat anachronistic joke about nudism. Gene’s fiancee immediately takes to Kent. Jim runs interference by informing Kent that Susan is “practically engaged” to Gene.

They have dinner at Big Jim’s house, and Pat provides his requisite comic relief by eating too much. They tease Susan about making biscuits that are hard as rock, and Susan attacks Gene back for not being able to deal with local raiders. Some ranch hands quit because of the violence. Kent volunteers to help, but shortly afterwards Jim is shot.

Gene and Kent chase down the gunman on horseback, and Kent shoots him dead, much to the dismay of Gene. Susan is still tearing into Gene, and he’s starting to have his own doubts. Gene and Pat decide to ride out to follow the raiders and set an ambush for them.

They see the men take shovels and start digging. Gene comes back to town and accuses Kent of being behind the raids, saying that he has clay on his boots from the Triangle Ranch. In the meantime, Pat has discovered the gold they were looking for. Kent and the others come in to hold them at gunpoint, but are distracted by a ringing clock, allowing Gene to punch them out. I guess this is the titular doublecross.

Gene likes it kinky

Gene and Kent slug it out while Pat fans himself with his hat, and of course Gene wins. We fade to him singing this episode’s song, “Texas Never Cry”, to Susan, who now adores him again. She’s just into violence. True to form, the episode ends with Gene spanking her over his leg.

What I Thought: This is another Gene Autry episode that is pretty similar to the Lone Ranger formula that I’ve become oh so familiar with, including a villain with a duplicitous and perhaps overly circuitous plan to get a big stash of gold. I may have gotten a false impression from the comparatively gentle first episode I watched. Ultimately, it’s not all that surprising that a Western aimed at kids would focus primarily on the action, but part of me is always looking for som ething a little slower and more atmospheric.

The main difference in The Gene Autry Show, of course, is that rather than being an outsider Gene is part of the community under threat, although in a slightly different way each time. While it’s strange in retrospect to watch a series like this that actively resists continuity while starring a singular actor, in these early days where filmed TV was a novelty it’s easy to see how Autry and his production company would conceive these episodes the samea s movies. After all, nobody thinks that John Wayne is literally the same person in all his movies, although he usually plays similar characters. But television, unlike the movies, would move away from this star-driven concept towards static characters.

In “Doublecross Valley”, the main grounding relationship is Gene’s romantic entanglement with Susan. Gail Davis had previously appeared in “Blackwater Valley Feud” (a lot of valleys around here) as another love interest for Gene, although she was a much more likeable character then. The show perhaps misjudges her dialogue, and instead of being teasing or difficult she just comes off as mean. The conclusion, in which she receives corrective spanking, is also disturbing and ill-judged, no matter how playfully it’s presented. It seems hard to believe that these people ever liked each other, let alone were “almost engaged.”

The Union army rides to the rescue.

The other thing that interested me about this episode was the opening scene, containing the crime that sets up the stakes of the episode. For one thing, it takes up a fair amount of time before Gene and company even show up, and the initial criminal Judd Parker seems to vanish into the wind without receiving punishment. For another, the event is set shortly after the Civil War with Parsons identified as attacking a Union supply train.

Westerns often dance around the Civil War, due to the still-ongoing cultural dispute of how to remember the war. In the 1950s much of the white South still identified with the Confederacy, or at least a mythical version of it, and studios wanted to avoid offending. Westerns were full of noble ex-Confederates, as in Ford’s elemental Stagecoach, but they mostly avoided dealing with the war itself. The Union could be referenced as a plot element, but Gene Autry wasn’t about to put on their colours and fight the Rebs.

It’s not clear how long has passed since the opening scene, but the world of The Gene Autry Show is anything but the one split apart by war. In theory, this would place the story towards the end of the 19th century, when the West was already somewhat settled. But in reality the show, like so many other Westerns, takes place in no place and time other than the mythical West, a national dream of a bucolic past where all troubles can be solved by a good man with a steady hand.

Coming up next: Oliver J. Dragon is here to fix television.

Episode 227: The Gene Autry Show – “Blackwater Valley Feud”

What I watched: A first-season episode of family Western The Gene Autry Show. In addition to the titular Autry, the episode features sidekick Pat Butram and guest stars Gail Davis, Francis McDonald, Stanley Andrews and Harry Lauter. It was written by Paul Gangelin and directed by George Archainbaud. “Blackwater Valley Feud” aired on Sunday, September 3, 1950 on CBS at 7:00 PM and is available on Internet Archive.

What happened: Pat runs into Jody Bowers, the new man running a chuckwagon for the TC company, replacing his friend Bill. They decide to race the coaches, but Gene interrupts, saying that his boss (in this episode anyway) and the owner of the road, Meechum, has said they can’t use it. The ornery old owner of the company, Carson, objects, drawing guns, but Gene is the quicker draw. Also with the company is the owner’s neice, a feisty cowgirl. Gene decides to let her go through because she’s hot.

Carson and Meechum meet in town and argue. Meechum objects to Carson selling his company to a bunch of hicks, and there’s a scuffle with a lot of wide punches thrown. If anyone in these shows took a boxing class they would own the West. Pat gets involved in the melee too, with assorted comic hijinx. Gene finally comes in to break them up, but not before Meechum starts waving a gun around. He kicks Pat in the butt, and there’s literally a “wah wah wah” effect.

There’s a nice paralell between the opening, playful wagon race and the cliamctic one at the end of the episode.

The next time Carson tries to ride the road, his men have deserted him. Lilah wants to come with him, but he sends her back becuase he doesn’t want to look like he’s hiding behind a woman. When he does try to ride across the trail, men shoot at him and kill him. Gene meets with Meechum, who swears he didn’t do it.

The sherriff doesn’t believe Meechum’s story and sends him to jail. Some of his friends try to get Gene to change his testimony to protect his boss, but he refuses. The bad guys decide to intimidate Lilah next, hoping to get her to sell the ranch. One cowboy knocks her off his horse, and Gene slugs him for disrespecting a woman, which he describes as “settling things peacefully.”

Gene tries to convince Lilah not to turn the land into a farm by showing her the landscape and singing a song. This doesn’t work. When they return to Lilah’s ranch, they find that four horsemen (not those four) riding around shooting their guns in the air. Gene pursues and kills one of the men, who no one can identify. Lilah decides to sell the ranch, and Jody conveniently has an in at a local development company. I think I see where this is going.

Our hero gets a hunch that something ain’t right. Gene goes to the sheriff and looks up a law that says the road will become public if Jody crosses it one more time. Weird laws. Gene tries to stop Jody from making the trip, but he takes off and the remaining horsemen attack. Gene shoots them and chases Jody down in his wagon. He catches up to Jody and clotheslines him, then stops the horses before they enter the road. The episode ends with Lilah deciding to keep ranching and Gene letting her use the road.

What I thought: I quite liked the first half of the episode, which presented a conflict in which neither side is entirely sympathetic or in the right. As in previous Gene Autry Show episodes, the conflict is relatively small scale and based off the physical reality of frontier life, in which having the right of way on a private road can be a matter of survival. Bound up in it is a betrayal of the trust which the business of the West was based on, and a gap between legal rights and the responsibilities of frontier honour.

But The Gene Autry Show seems uncomfortable with this conflict, or perhaps unaware how to solve it, and, in a common move for genre narratives, ultimately brushes it to the side by introducing a grander, more straightforward villain who is pitting the two sides against each other for their own ends. The back half of the episode, with Gene helping Lilah investigate her father’s death, isn’t exactly bad, but it feels a little formulaic and more consciously fictional.

The black-and-white scrubland does not make a great case for herself.

Lilah herself is a fun character, played with verve by Gail Davis, admirably loyal to an unadmirable cause. We’ve seen strong-ish female characters in The Lone Ranger, but this might be the first time in this series I’ve actually seen a woman on horseback. Of course, the plot has to end with her realizing she’s wrong, but at least she’s still an independent woman at the end of it.

Perhaps most interesting is the underlying ideology behind the conflict. Carson and Lilah want to transform their land into farmland, which goes against the ethos of the west, the beauty of the rolling hills that Gene sings so eloquently about. (This is also the first time the song has factored so directly into the plot.) “They’re cowboys, not farmers,” he says of the locals, suggesting that their occupation is not just a matter of happenstance but rather their fundamental character. The development of the West is both the cause that spurs the Western and its ultimate undoing, with the transformation of the untamed land of adventure into a boring old part of modern America being the ghost that has haunted Western films since its beginning.

But in Western movies and TV, the end of the West can be averted, at least for a little while. Eventually, the viewer knows, the private roads would become highways, the ranches would indeed become chicken farms and then factories, and Americans would stop being cowboys and start being people who watched cowboys on TV. But for now, there is only one farmer to persuade, and with a little bit of the Autry charm we can spend a little bit longer in the Wild.

Coming up next: Suspense returns for its second season with “A Pocketful of Murder.”

Episode 223: The Gene Autry Show – “The Double Switch” (August 27, 1950)

What I watched: : The sixth episode of the first season of The Gene Autry Show, a family Western. In addition to the titular Autry, the show co-starred Pat Buttram as sidekick Pat. This episode was written by Earle Snell and directed by Frank McDonald, with Alan Hale and Steve Darrell guest-starring, and aired on Sunday, August 27, 1950 on CBS at 7:00 p.m. It is available for viewing on the Internet Archive.

What happened: We open with Gene directly addressing the camera, extolling the virtues of Doublemint gum. He sings about wanting to be in Texas again as he and Pat put up a fence. They see their pal Clem, a farmer, trying to navigate a narrow road on a two-horse carriage with another carriage coming in the other direction. He gets thrown from his carriage, with the two horses running off and leaving him and a hog in a crate (?) behind.

Gene leaps into action to catch the runaway horses. After securing them, he talks to the other man about a new arrival named Harlow who’s rumoured to be giving money away. Gene meets with Harlow (Darrell) who is ready to help fund a new road, but the money has to be delivered to a state bank within a day. Harlow will put up $3, 000 to match the $17, 000 the town had raised last year. There’s a road that can get there quickly, but stages travelling along it are frequently robbed.

Gene and Pat decide to accompany the stage with the money, driven by the sheriff and Harlow. They hear some gunshots from the other side of the butte and decide to investigate. While they’re away, Harlow takes a sharp turn and knocks over the cart, rendering the sheriff unconscious. He gives the money over to a masked bandit, revealing that he was in kahoots with them to steal the $17, 000 all along.

The intellectual’s comedy trio.

Coming back from the battle, Gene sees the bandit and pursues him, but gets shot off his horse. The bandit stashes the bags in the rocks, and reveals himself to be… some guy (Hale). Gene discovers a cabin with mail addressed to Harlow. He hides as the bandit returns to the cabin, then pops out to punch him out and tie him up.

Back in the town, Harlow is still trying to convince the old sheriff of his version of events. Gene brings Pat around to the cabin so that they can wait for Harlow to show up. In the mean time, another robber shows up, apparently a former accomplice of Harlow, and unties the first bandit so that he can lead him to the gold.

Gene sees Harlow coming and disarms him, but the other two bandits set upon him. Pat joins in on the shoot-out and manages to gun everyone down from behind a rock. It turns out that the bags they were fighting over were full of lead washers, and that Gene had swapped out the money and sent it ahead on another stage. We conclude with Gene telling the audience that he’s just come up with a great story for next week, and to watch a full-length movie of his at the nearest theatre.

What I thought: In the last entry I did on The Gene Autry Show I contrasted it with The Lone Ranger, and that tack still seems relevant here. This episode in particular seems like it has the basic elements of a Lone Ranger plot: you have a bandit masquerading as a civilian, a stagecoach robbery, and somebody getting kidnapped. The differences, then, illustrate Gene Autry‘s different priorities as a series.

Most notably, the whole first act of the show has no crime at all. The main drama is two stage coach drivers trying to get past each other on a road, with one insulting the other’s driving. (A scenario with no modern parallels!) Mundane things like a road that’s too narrow or a runaway horse can be just as much a source of excitement as a story of good against evil.

This is possible because Gene Autry is much more grounded in the agrarian society of a Western settlement than the Ranger is. The Lone Ranger enters and leaves a new community each episode, while Gene begins his shows already enmeshed in one (although exactly what that community is, and his precise role in it, change from week to week.) The opening song invites us too a pastoral paradise of sunny days on the farm and long horse rides, a place we don’t mind hanging out in for a little while before the story really starts.

Of course, if you’re in it for the action and suspense, then I think Lone Ranger executes it a bit better. Given the more laid-back tone of Gene Autry, it’s hard to take the bad guys and their plans too seriously. This episode also makes the strange choice of having Gene’s bumbling sidekick Pat be the one to shoot all of the bandits (and shoot them dead), which was certainly surprising but a bit unsatisfying.

But overall, I am still on board with The Gene Autry Show and its softer version of the family Western. Of course, these observations are based on a small sample of episodes, and I’m sure they will change as I eep watching. But it’s interesting to see how two series approached more or less the same subject matter in very different ways.

Coming up next: Studio One returns for another season and welcomes us to ‘Zone Four”

Episode 221.5: The Gene Autry Show – “The Star Toter” (August 20, 1950)

What I watched: The sixth episode of the first season of The Gene Autry Show, a family Western. In addition to the titular Autry, the show co-starred Pat Buttram as sidekick Pat, with guest stars Barbara Stanley, George J. Lewis and Billy Gray. The episode was directed by Frank McDonald and written by Jack Townley, and aired on Sunday, August 20, 1950 at 7:00 PM on CBS. It is now available on DVD and the Internet Archive.

What happened: Autry is introduced as “America’s Favorite Cowboy”, a clear shot across the bow to our masked friend. We see Autry help to herd some cattle and sing “Back in the Saddle Again.” After he’s finished the song, two guys show up to tell him that some outlaws have robbed a nearby bank and killed the sheriff. Gene is the sheriff’s deputy, so it’s his job to bring them to justice.

The introduction establishes Gene as living a pretty bucolic life.

There’s an unconvincing-looking horseback chase, and they catch up to the pair. The bad guys hole up in a cabin and start firing, resulting in a shoot-out. Gene sneaks around back just as his sidekick Pat shoots one of the outlaws named Ben (Lewis). Inside the house, they run into a little boy who’s understandably very upset about his dad being killed. Gene eventually gets him to put down the rifle so they can take Dad to the doctor and then to jail.

With the adults taken care of, Gene sets his sights on re-educating the boy, named Jim (Gray). Pat and the others thing that the kid is just evil and sent to jail or reform school, but Autry wants to invite him up to his ranch. Meanwhile, the other outlaw tells Jim to be friendly with Gene as part of a plan to get his Dad out of jail.

Up at the ranch, Gene is preparing a birthday gift for Jim, against the wishes of Pat: Little Champ, a smaller version of his famous horse. Pat tries to make a birthday cake, and some slapstick ensues. Jim takes off with Little Champ before the party can get started. He gets the new deputy to abandon the jail by telling him Gene is there for a cup of coffee (not a great moment in law enforcement), and passes a gun to his dad, with words of a plan to break out tonight. Just as he’s about to leave town, Martha (Stanley), whose role seems to be just to be the girl, comes up to give him a speech about the power of friendship, which seems to get through to him.

Jim returns to the ranch, and guiltily returns Little Champ to Gene. Gene convinces him that he doesn’t have to be loyal to his father, because Ben hasn’t been loyal to Jim by not raising him to be a law-abiding citizen. When Dad attempts to break out, Gene is there and gets in a fistfight with him. Jim ends up with the gun in the scuffle, and throws it to Gene. Ben uses the kid as a hostage, saying that he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way.

Gene reluctantly does what he says, allowing the man to rob the safe. But Jim stays behind and frees Gene. Ben also kills his accomplice. Gene chases him down on horseback, and the two horses are even briefly in the same shot. Gene finally catches up with the bad guy and tosses him off the horse. Jim holds him at rifle-point to break up the fight. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

What I thought: Gene Autry was already established as a Western star by the time he came to TV. In particular, he was known as one of the foremost stars of the infamous “singing cowboy” sub-genre. I hadn’t seen any of Autry’s movies before watching this — somehow the singing cowboys are not among the Western films on film studies syllabi. But I tried to come into the Gene Autry Show with an open mind, and I actually ended up mostly enjoying it. There wasn’t even any singing outside of the opening sequence.

This guy was pretty annoying though.

The show is a half-hour, family-oriented (read: kiddy) Western, and as such I can’t help but draw comparisons to The Lone Ranger. Compared to the masked man, Gene inevitably comes off as more human and mortal. When he gets trapped in a jail cell towards the end of the episode, it’s actually a little alarming, whereas with The Lone Ranger I would just assume it was all a part of the hero’s plan.

The plot itself is also a marked difference. As opposed to the mystery-oriented crime stories of The Lone Ranger, “The Star Toter” hinges on an emotional storyline of Gene trying to reform a criminal’s son. The story is undeniably crude and simplified — Jim is converted mainly because Gene gives him stuff and his father turns out to be an absolute scumbag. But it’s nice to see a character drama as the crux of one of these stories. Gene’s heroic trait here is not his shooting arm or rapid steed (although he has both of those) but his compassion. It is his willingness to trust Jim, against the advice of every supporting character, that allows him to foil the father’s plan.

There’s also an undeniably Oedipal edge to the plot. Jim has to choose the replacement father figure of Gene, representing law, order, social approval and all of that other superego-y stuff over his actual father. To do so, he has to prove himself willing to kill his father by pointing his rifle at him. (The phallic nature of the gun also seems relevant here.) In doing so, he rejects a crude and immediate patriarchy for the broader patriarchal force of social order.

“The Star Toter” is an undeniably didactic story, with a lot of repetitive dialogue and speechifying about the sanctity of the law. But there’s something charming about its simplicity. If I end up getting the DVDs and watching all four seasons of this, I will no doubt start to be annoyed by this type of story. But for now, I’m interested in watching future episodes of The Gene Autry Show and maybe hear some more songs. And, good for me, there are several more first-season episodes available.

Coming up next: It’s a big night out on the town for our favourite puppets.