Wednesday, May 5, 2021

West of the Divide (1934)

An unsurprising but perfectly competent Western. Ted (John Wayne) is still wondering what happened to his brother and smarting at how his Dad was probably killed by Gentry (Lloyd Whitlock) and the family ranch taken over. By sheer chance he sees the opportunity to pose as an outlaw and infiltrate Gentry's gang. Gentry meanwhile is after another ranch, menacing Fred Winters (Lafe McKee) and his daughter Faye (Virginia Brown Faire)...



With the help of his sidekick Dusty (George Gabby Hayes), Ted seeks evidence of Gentry's mis-deeds and finally brings him to rights with much hard horse riding and diving through windows.

Although the story is a bit by numbers (though with a few surprises) and artistically is nothing out of the ordinary, this is a decent Western. John Wayne was not quite the finished article but you can see why he was well on the way to becoming a legend.