pansy cowboy
by Douglas Messerli
Robert N. Lee (screenplay
based on the novel by Caroline Lockhart), Richard Thorpe (director) The Dude
Wrangler / 1930 [Lost Film]
Director Richard Thorpe
worked for years on silent and early sound films that were known for their
extremely low budgets. Since he had so little money for his productions, Thorpe
generally filmed only one take of each scene, thus assuring the low quality of
his movies. In the industry he became known as “Mr. One Take,” and it was not
until later in his career, when he directed several of the Tarzan and Lassie
films and musicals and comedies of the 1950s and 1960s such as Follow the Boys, The
Horizonal Lieutenant, Ten Thousand Rooms, Jailhouse Rock, Three
Little Words, and The Great Caruso that he received any significant
credit for his talents, yet even these were often grade B movies.
Most of the critics hint that his 1930
early talkie, The Dude Wrangler, was also a poorly made movie, although
it stared some notables such as Francis X. Bushman and Clyde Cook, the later of
whom was the director and actor in What’s the World Coming To? of 1926.
The author of gay film guide Screened Out, Richard
Barrios tells us that no print of this film now exists. But the story is a
rather familiar one, repeating elements of Harry Schenck, Edward Warren, and
Alice Guy Blaché’s Algie the Miner (1912), Buster Keaton and John G.
Blystone’s Our Hospitility (1923), and Fred Niblo’s film of the very
same year, Way Out West (1930).
In all these films either an effeminate
male or, in Keaton’s case, a “city slicker” is forced to come to terms with a
more rough and rugged world than that to which he is accostomed. In the The
Dude Wrangler’s case, the hero Wally McCann (Tom Keene) is described
outrightly as a homosexual, one of the film’s flier announcing the works as
being “The Story of a ‘Pansy’ Cowboy—Oh Dear!”
To put it more subtly, the tale involves
Wally, an effeminate young man who spends his time creating embroidery patterns
for his Aunt Mary (Margaret Seddon). Helen Dale (Lina Basquette), who breeds
ponies for polo games, becomes infatuated with Wally, but is furious with his
inability to stand up for himself and be a man. In an attempt to please Helen,
Wally buys land in Wyoming near Helen’s farm, intending to become a good
farmer. When he finally buys the ranch, he celebrates by throwing a party. But
another neighbor Canby (Francis X. Bushman) who also is love with Helen, plots
with Wong (Sôjin Kamiyama) to arrange for a stampede of the cattle herd, from which he intends to save Helen and win
the girl. But having heard of Canby’s
plans, Wally fights it out with Canby, winning the battle and Helen’s love.
Since I was unable to see the film, I
don’t know how comedically these scenes were portrayed. But from the posters
they look as if Wally had taken some wrestling lessons. Or perhaps he just
enjoyed “wrangling the dude.” This is a lost film I truly wish I might have
been able to have watched, despite its low production values.
Los Angeles, July 24, 2021
Reprinted from World
Cinema Review (July 2021).
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