1h 3min | Crime, Drama, Music, Sport | 2 September 1941
Director: Albert Herman (as Al Herman)
Stars: Jack La Rue, Marian Marsh, Clarence Muse
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033655/
Watched online, fuzzy print.
Classified as Music for the little girl's piano playing, and the singing of Clarence Muse and his singers, the all-black ranch workers, male and female.
I think of Jack La Rue as speaking deez and dem dialog with a Brooklyn/Bronx or foreign accent, portraying a gangster. Here he speaks with perfect enunciation and grammar; very refreshing. He's a wrongly convicted man released from prison early, returning to his family horse farm run by his brother, who has a daughter and a second wife (girl's mom is dead).
The new wife is materialistic and unsympathetic, manipulating the husband to do things not great for the family. She wants Jack to move on, but he stays as a paid ranch hand, concealing his identity to the mostly new staff on the ranch. Jack works to contain the trouble, instantly taming the best but most troublesome horse. A year or so later, another horse, tended from birth by the daughter, is falsely accused of killing a man without cause, and Jack mounts the horse's defense. The plot has an important thread I'm omitting, but I don't want to write more.
The new wife is not portrayed as complicated, just self-centered/evil, but at the end she turns on a dime, satisfying everyone onscreen. That's the weakest part of the film. Otherwise it's ok.
Edward F. Finney Productions, distr. Monogram, dir. Herman; 6
