drystyx This is the old time basic Western, and one interesting aspect about it is how it is one of the "models" for most later TV series.Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is by the star billing. Dix and Carillo are top billed, yet it is obvious from the start that Preston Foster and Frances Gifford are the lead romantic interests.Romantic leads were not always the standard. Top billing in "THEM!" went to the chief characters of Gwynn and Whitmore as the eccentric show stealing scientist and the policeman who was followed throughout the story. In "THE RAVEN" the two young romantic lovers play second fiddle to three with star billing in Karloff, Price, and Lorre.So it's not new. What is important is that the character played by Dix is the one who is the strong, solid, stable influence. This is the character who would be the mainstay of just about every TV Western series to follow, and most other TV shows. He was Cheyenne, Bronco, Matt Dillon, Ben and Adam Cartwright.Foster was the mistake prone fellow who lacked the solid fundamentals. He learns some bitter lessons the hard way. Unfortunately, as in real life, it is other people who pay for them. In this case, his first born son does.The villainy of the Mexicans is on the racist side. One interesting bit is that when the two good guys meet up with the villain Carillo, it is their own man who is at fault for the troubles, but they are men of experience and savvy, and recognize Carillo for what he is.Frances makes a very nice entrance, and she is very stunning. She appeals to both the male libido and the female intellect.Dix, though seemingly shadowed in the background, is no more shadowed than Bronco or Ben Cartwright were in their endeavors. They were the main character, because they were not just one man, but representative of a lot of men who would try to make things work. They weren't "Everyman". They were "Everymen".

classicsoncall This turned out to be a fairly entertaining Western, as well as an interesting analysis of a once forward thinking individual whose aging conservatism turns rigid. Paxton Bryce (Preston Foster) winds up coming full circle by the film's blazing finale, having had to endure the alienation of those closest to him. You can figure out fairly early how this one's going to go even though the happy ending is tempered by the loss of Bryce's young son.Richard Dix is top billed as Bryce's long time friend and business partner Dan Taylor. Taylor's sister happens on the scene to provide the romantic interest as Bryce's future wife Abby (Frances Gifford). The film doesn't spend too much time developing that relationship, but that's not the central focus. The story has more to do with the regular expansion of the partners' land holdings and cattle business, with Leo Carrillo providing the foil as a hustling cattle thief. Except for the fact that he's the villain of the piece, he plays it pretty much the way he would as the Cisco Kid's sidekick Pancho in the 1950's TV series. He may not mangle as much of the English language here, but his temperament and mannerisms make it difficult to see him as the bad guy he's intended to be.Guinn Williams delivers in the comic relief role as 'Sailaway', a name derived from his free wheeling riverboat days with Bryce and Taylor. I've always enjoyed his roles in movies starring Roy Rogers, John Wayne and Errol Flynn, though here he's not in the usual sidekick role. Instead, he's a loyal employee of the two river men turned ranchers, who gets his kicks by verbally sparring with his buddy Runty (Cliff Edwards). Sailaway helps make the save near the end of the story when he gets wind of Dominique Beauchard's (Carrillo) plans to raid the town of Riverford. By that time, the opposition of the local ranchers to Bryce's restriction of his range land is about to get ugly, and becomes the turning point in bringing Bryce back to his senses.Though the open range theme had been done time and time again in 'B' Westerns of the Forties and Fifties, the formula still works well here. It reaches a rather dramatic but sad climax when Bryce's seven year old son dies from injuries suffered in a cattle stampede trying to enforce his father's rigid rules. I don't believe I've ever seen an element as harsh in service to a film of the era before. It works, but one can't help feeling that maybe they could have come to a happy ending without the loss of Pax Jr.

bsmith5552 "American Empire" is another of a series of modestly budgeted features produced by Harry "Pop" Sherman, who also was responsible for the highly successful Hopalong Cassidy series. This one deals with the emergeance of the cattle ranches in Texas in the years following the Civil War. Two soldiers of fortune, Dan Taylor (Richard Dix) and Pax Bryce (Preston Foster) are ruuning a freight business from their riverboat. One day they meet up with the unscrupulous Dominique Beauchard (Leo Carillo) who is driving cattle to his home state of Louisiana. The boys agree to transport the cattle to their destination for a set fee. When Beauchard fails to pay up they keep the cattle and decide to go into the cattle ranching business. Into the mix comes Taylor's sister Abby (Frances Gifford) with whom Bryce falls in love and marries. They soon have a son Pax Jr. (Merrill Rodin) and Pax Sr. becomes more and more ambitious as time goes on, much to the chagrin of his partner Dan. He has angered the smaller ranchers by refusing them permission to drive their cattle across his land. The ranchers decide to stampede the cattle through but Pax Jr. is killed in the stampede. Bryce becomes distraught and decides to erect barb wire fences around the ranch which forces Dan to dissolve their partnership. All this is resolved at the end when all realize that progress must prevail over the ambitions of one man. Also in the cast are Guinn "Big Boy" Williams and Cliff Edwards as the comic relief, Jack LaRue and Chris-Pin Martin as Carillo's henchmen, and veterans William Farnum and Hal Taliaferro in other roles. Foster is really the star of the movie despite being billed third. He delivers a solid performance. Dix, who was top billed, is really only a supporting player. Gifford looks lovely as the heroine. The action is well staged and there's one dandy of a gunfight at the climax of the film. A good western.

Snow Leopard Good action and an interesting story make this Western good entertainment despite a few minor flaws. The characters aren't very deep, but they're interesting, and the pace moves along very nicely as it builds up the tension and leads up to a good and often exciting climactic sequence. Richard Dix helps a lot with a pretty good performance as the key character.The story sets up a situation with a lot of possibilities. On the one hand is the hard-headed Bryce, head of the big cattle empire. Then there are the rest of the ranchers, whom Bryce has alienated and angered by his aggressive policies. Finally there is the wild card, the crafty rustler Beauchard, out only for himself. In the middle of all the conflicts is Dix's character Dan Taylor, trying to hold things together. As the story develops from there, Dix generally underplays to good effect (making a nice contrast with, for example, his better known but rather overblown performance in "Cimarron"), and lets the situation speak for itself when it should. Only some shallow characterizations and some ineffective comic relief hold it back a little at times. Otherwise, it gets pretty good mileage out of its potential, and has most of the things you could ask for in a Western.