An Exercise In Nonsense

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The "Trouble in Sonora" is the bank's been robbed in another of RKO's George O'Brien series.Banker John Cameron (Howard Hickman) is blamed for the robbery since he was the only one who knew the combination to the safe. Rancher Clint Bradford (O'Brien) believes in Cameron's innocence and sends him away to an undisclosed location. Of course, Clint's interest in Cameron's comely young daughter Julie (Rosiland Keith) had nothing to do with it. But wait, wasn't that Cy Kendall in the background at the bank. You've got to believe that he was up to something.Ross Daggett (Kendall) who has a vested interest in having Cameron found guilty, sends his two henchmen Tex (Monte Montague) and Dusty (Ward Bond) to find and kill him. At the same time Clint and Deputy Larry (Jack Perrin) set out to bring Cameron back for trial. Before they can reach him Tex and Dusty kill the Deputy unbeknownst to Clint who had been "circling around behind them". Cameron is blamed for the killing.Cameron turns himself in to the sheriff (Bob Burns) and goes to trial. In the interim Clint and his sidekick Whopper (Chill Wills) learn how Daggett got the combination. He has the Judge (Lloyd Ingraham) move the trial over to the bank in order to flush out the real robbers and.........................................O'Brien was an able action star. He could handle the rough stuff (witness his scrap with Bond) and could also perform the "hard ridin'" as well. Ray Whitley croons a couple of songs with the Phelps Brothers and "acts" the part of sidekick Andy. Tom London plays the town doctor. O'Brien and Bond would appear together in John Ford's "Fort Apache" (1948). Bond and Wills would go on to lengthy careers as western character actors.

Chubby George O'Brien - he of the massive over-sized titfer - grins his way though this entertaining B western, clearing the name of the honest banker (was there one?), sorting out dodgy surveyors Bond and Montague and finally winning the hand of Rosalind Keith.Ray Whitley and the Phelps Brothers are on hand to warble a couple of ditties about life on the prairie and Chill Wills, as sidekick Whopper, tells tall tales presumably intended as comic relief.The sets are good and the photography is nice: there are even a few plot twists to keep the non-western enthusiast interested. Above average.

Trouble In Sundown finds George O'Brien and his sidekicks Ray Whitely and Chill Wills investigating not just a bank robbery, but just why is whoever did the robbery want to ruin the reputation of banker Howard C. Hickman. For instance Hickman is not just accused of the bank robbery, but he's also framed for the murder of Deputy Jack Perrin who was pursuing him. In a ton of westerns made at this time bankers during those Depression years of the 30s were more often than not the villains. It was easy enough to sell that. This western was a bit unusual in that Hickman is not the villain, but the real bad guys sure want to make it seem like he's in cahoots with them.Had he not gone into more A list films Chill Wills could have done a whole career as a western sidekick. Ward Bond whose credits in 1939 also included Gone With The Wind and other A list films would be doing a lot more of those in the next two decades. Bond was one of the villain's henchmen.There's action enough, but Trouble In Sundown also includes a bit of detective work by O'Brien and his companions. Still it's a solid B western for the Saturday matinée kid crowd.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I really liked Trouble In Sundown. It's other than mindless shoot-'em-up. Not plot-heavy, but plot-intelligent. Kindly old banker John Cameron, who doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body, opens one morning to find that his burglar-proof safe - to which only HE has the combination - has been looted, and the body of his suffocated night watchman is in inside. Dusty, one half of a brotherly surveying team whose second-floor apartment is atop the bank, incites other opening-bell customers and passers-by to accuse Cameron, who Clint helps escape. It looks even worse for Cameron when a deputy is killed while approaching Cameron's first hideout. Of course, Dusty is workin' for somebody who's wealthy enough to cover the bank's loss and respected enough to assume that role. But the debtors don't realize that the new moneyman (unlike Cameron) won't tolerate their past-due loans 'til autumn, when harvest and round-up riches will enable them to return to their payment schedules. Meantime, the main villain can cheaply buy the many foreclosed properties. The state is overseeing all this, and complicates the bad guy's plan, however, by wanting to wait sixty days, expecting that Cameron'll be captured before then, and, in deference to his spotless record, he'll have the opportunity to explain. Shucks! Nobody'll back-owe, then! Now we gotta catch and convict Cameron right away; the first half of which is managed; but the courtroom events really won me over. There are a couple of adequately-placed Phelps brothers tunes here and a little romance, as Cameron's daughter, June, attracts Clint's affections. In this one, O'Brien exercises his brain as well as his brawn.