The Old Barn Dance (1938) watch online HD

Gene Autry was one of the most popular of stars in the 1930s and 1940s, in the movies,on radio, and on record. In his own way, a lot like Bing Crosby except he appealed to the folks in what now would be considered the red states.

His westerns were primarily musicals and had little plot line. But I have to confess that the villain here was truly unique. Tractor salesmen who are out to takeover a lot of land when farmers put up mortgages to get tractors.

Do you believe it? Gene Autry is hawking the virtue of using horses for ranch and farm work and he defeats the dastardly tractor people who have hornswoggled him to do a radio show for them.

With that kind of plot, can you take this film seriously. Of course not. So just listen to the singing.

By the way, the Old Barn Dance was a popular radio show at the time that featured country and western music and Gene made his start there

Pretty standard early Gene Autry. Horse Traders, Gene and sidekick Smiley, find themselves suckered into a tractor peddling scheme, designed to swindle the local landowners, by unsuspecting radio station saleslady Sally Dawson (Joan Valerie). When the town blames them Gene and Smiley must prove their innocence and bring the bad guys to justice.

Gene cranks out a fair amount of tunes and Smiley contributes more than a fair share of comic relief in an average oater. This one is really more of a Musical with appearances by Walt Shrum and his Colorado Hillbillies and the Stafford Sisters.

The Old Barn Dance is also notable because it gave rise to bit player "Dick Weston" AKA Roy Rogers who would soon become Republics number one Singing Cowboy.

The Old Barn Dance (1938), another very good Echo Bridge ex-16mm DVD, release finds Gene Autry actively promoting horses over tractors for farm use. In fact the tractor people are the villains, the cowboys who capture wild horses and auction them at inflated prices to dirt-poor homesteaders, the heroes.

At least the story runs unexpectedly true-to-life, even if the script's sympathies are oddly misplaced. Gene carries on as if cowboys are just naturally salt-of-the-earth and that the use of animals as beasts-of-burden is a gift of God, while on the other hand, tractors of course are instruments of the devil.

The lovely Helen Valkis and young Sammy McKim help Gene carry on with this illusion - which is not by any means the only odd and inconsistent factor in Bernard McConville's misguided script that admirably succeeds in successfully pandering to rural prejudices.

Good compact screenplay that manages to coordinate songs, action, and radio-station plot in fairly smooth fashion. Okay, so maybe a tractor can do the work of 5 horses, but can a tractor run down a bad-guy in a car by going overland. Gene shows how a horse can (before Champion). Besides, a tractor can't be stroked or nuzzle like a buddy like a horse can.

Actually, the movie somewhat mirrors Depression era conditions (1938)—the farmers owe more on the tractors than they can pay, so they may lose their farms. Trouble is they're the victims of a crooked scheme that involves the unwitting Autry, who then has to make things right.

I like the radio programming from behind a bale of hay—a whole new concept in broadcasting. In fact, mobile broadcasting plays an important role in the story. Of course, Frog (Burnette) gets to do his bit, and by playing a musical instrument that looks like it's from Mars. All in all, it's a good little Autry programmer, Gene's last for Republic studios, who soon hired Roy Rogers to replace him. Oh well, I still like horses best.

Like a lot of Gene Autry's pictures, this one opens with Gene on horseback, singing along with his backup musicians (this time the Colorado Hillbillies) and Smiley Burnette alongside. Though Autry always portrayed the hero in his pictures, the passage of decades since he was a major star often reveal that he was sometimes on the wrong side of progress as well. This time, Gene's a horse trader up against a new fangled contraption called a tractor, as villain Thornton's (Ivan Miller) Farming Equipment Company uses the old foreclosure scheme to call in it's loans against local farmers.

For a picture that comes in under an hour, there sure are quite a few musical interludes along the way with a whole host of singing groups. Besides the Hillbillies, there's also The Stafford Sisters and a comical looking group called the Maple City Four. Personally, I got a kick out of the singer on banjo sporting the Beatles haircut some twenty five years before the Fab Four hit the scene.

Storywise, Gene's put in an awkward position when his voice is broadcast on Radio KLD making it look like he's promoting the Mammoth Tractor Company. When the area farmers start to get their late payment notices, it looks like Gene had a hand in backing the crooked finance company in cahoots with Thornton. This will all get set right by the end of the story, with Gene even overlooking the fact that Miss Sally Dawson (Helen Valkis) played him for a chump, even if unknowingly.

As a Western movie fan, I had to do a double take when I saw the name Dick Weston in the opening credits. Try as I might, it was difficult to pick him out in one of the singing groups, but I think I finally got a glimpse of him. Right after this picture, Republic gave him the name Roy Rogers in his very first starring role, "Under Western Stars".

Say, keep your eyes peeled in an early scene for a gas pump with a Mobilgas logo and a picture of the Texaco flying horse. That was kind of cool and it hung around on screen for a while making me wonder if it was an example of early product placement in film. Another noteworthy visual occurred later on in the picture when a series of over-sized posters came into view, one of which featured another cowboy film star, Johnny Mack Brown.

Slight Gene Autry vehicle will be a disappointment to those hoping by the time it's a full-fledged country-western musical along the lines of similar "b" movies from the period. Gene stars as a cowboy who sells wild horses in auctions with his group from town to town, singing and entertaining the crowds to get their attention. A young woman whose father owns a small town radio station tries to hire him to help out her failing station as a tractor seller wants an act for him to purchase radio time. Gene is not interested, given tractors are competition for his horses, but the girl tricks Roy into signing a contract just to appear on the radio but not letting him know his slot is sponsored by the tractor salesman. Of course the tractor salesman is also a crooked sort who signs the locals to contracts they can't make payments for and the locals blame Gene (WTH?) and go to whup him, of course they can't but good guy Gene tries to right the wrong done in his name.

Gene has some good western numbers but this is a kind of silly story and the leading lady's actions seem as mercenary as the bad guy. The ending is surprising violent with at least one corpse and in Gene's action scenes toward the end are rather brazenly done by a stuntman who scarcely resembles him.

Like most Gene Autry films, this one follows a standard formula. Gene sings, his backup band sings and Smiley Burnett sings. In addition, Gene retains his squeaky-clean image as an all-around nice guy-- though the ending DID catch me by surprise because instead of shooting the gun out of a bad guy's hand or just punching his lights out, he actually shoots and kills the guy--though he certainly DID have it coming and it was either him or Gene!

The film begins with Gene and the boys coming into a town to sell horses at a barn dance they'll put on for the community. Despite all the great singing, however, the residents don't buy a single horse because the town's gone crazy for the new-fangled tractors. Like so many Autry films, this one is set in the present day--with cars, telephones and tractors! Now without income, Gene agrees to bring his musical show to the radio--unaware that the unscrupulous lady in charge of the station will use this to sell MORE tractors. To make things worse, the guy who owns the tractor company is a real creep and intends to foreclose on all the farmers and taking them for everything he can get. When Gene learns he's been duped, he then refuses to make more broadcasts. However, this doesn't dissuade the lady nor the evil tractor salesman and it's ultimately up to Gene and the gang to dispense some good old fashioned cowboy justice.

Overall, this is yet another pleasant Gene Autry outing--about average but improved with some nice singing and the violent finale.