Bill Slocum There's a short list of films where John Wayne's character dies. I don't think "West Of The Divide" is on that list, but look again.In the opening five minutes, we watch a man collapse after drinking from a poison water hole. A close up reveals him to be none other than John Wayne. Less than a minute later, he's dead.Don't worry: That's not a spoiler. John Wayne is playing two characters in this movie. One, Gatt Gans, is a deadly outlaw who, as mentioned, winds up just dead. The other, Ted Hayden, happens to look like Gans, which Hayden discovers after lifting a wanted poster off Gans's corpse. It turns out Gans was en route to perform a hired killing, and it just so happens Hayden has some unfinished business with the hombre behind it."Maybe fate's kinda taken a hand in this deal," Hayden observes, before telling his pal Dusty (George "not yet Gabby" Hayes) that he'll pretend to be this bozo with the identical kisser.Fate indeed takes a hand in "West Of The Divide," a mighty heavy one, too. "West Of The Divide" is practically nothing but fate taking a hand.A couple of scenes on, a young woman rides away from two bandits. She falls off her horse and hides in a barn. A few moments later, the bandits ride by and happen to get into a fight over losing her. One pulls out a gun, and in the scuffle unknowingly wings her with a bullet. Minutes later, while she's bleeding dangerously close to death, Hayden and Dusty just happen to decide to bunk down in the same barn. Dusty discovers some blood, and well...That's not even mentioning the little boy who happens to have his own connection to Hayden's past, and happens to be associated with the group of baddies who happen to be after the woman and her money, and happens to pick just the right moment to lift some bullets from someone's gun...As much as it happens to reek of plot convenience, "West Of The Divide" also offers some memorably weak acting. The father, the chief villain, the woman, all play their roles with wooden stiffness. Even Hayes lacks his typical elan.Wayne by contrast is terrific, whether making friends with the boy or delivering some long and pointless exposition to Dusty about how Dusty saved him when he was a boy ("Anyway, it won't do you no good, livin' this all over again," says Dusty after stringing out Hayden's tale for five long minutes.) Wayne also grimaces with believable anger when he catches up with someone he's been after for a long time. Given the material, it would have been understandable if Wayne had just gone through the motions, but he really inhabits the part. It's a foretaste of what he would do with better roles in the not-so-distant future, though he didn't always perform as well as this in his B-picture days.The stunts here are solid, too. One involves a man standing on a runaway buckboard as it disintegrates around him, maybe the coolest stunt in the whole Wayne run of Lone Star pictures.When I wasn't watching Wayne, I was mostly just bored with this. Director Robert N. Bradbury maintains his characteristically slow pace, making all the silly fate twists he throws at you easier to notice. The Lone Star pictures were meant for casual viewing, and by younger viewers, but even with the bar lowered so it seems somehow not quite low enough for this dull oater.For Wayne completists only who want to see him in a rare double role, and playing a bad guy, too. Just don't go anywhere for the first five minutes. After that, though, there's little point sticking around.

FightingWesterner John Wayne and George Hayes come back to the place where Wayne spent his childhood in order to find out who killed his father and what became of his baby brother twelve years earlier. Wayne and Hayes then go undercover to stop a group of ranch thieves.There's a few good scenes and a decent climax in this entry in Wayne's Lone Star western series but mostly this is middle of the road entertainment with a bit too much talking and not enough action this time around.However, this does have some better-than-usual acting for the series. Duke and Gabby's performances are also quite likable, as is the actor that played Wayne's young friend.

bkoganbing West of the Divide finds the Duke as a man searching for his younger brother and at the same time the people who kidnapped him and murdered their father.The film opens with a piece of good luck coming their way in the person of the dying gunman Gatt Ganns who's been hired by Lloyd Whitlock to kill rancher Lafe McKee. Of course Whitlock is once again a villain in the Snidely Whiplash tradition who not only wants the ranch, but also has evil designs on McKee's daughter Virginia Brown Faire.In reviewing B westerns, sometimes I have a tendency to reach back to those 19th century morality plays so popular in that era. Whitlock in fact even laughs like a villain in one of those plays. For reference you should see the Irene Dunne-Allan Jones version of Showboat to see just the kind of drama they used to put on then. It survived in the B western, John Wayne's as well as other's.Wayne of course by the end solves all the problems concerned and the villain gets his just desserts. We can't say how though.The Duke pretends to be the recently deceased Mr. Ganns to get the goods on the bad guys along with sidekick Gabby Hayes. He discovers a young kid being raised by one of the outlaws. Interesting in this B western set firmly in the 19th century morality play tradition, we also have a topic so very gingerly touched on as child abuse. A rather adult theme for a western or any kind of picture at that time.Wayne was just beginning his stay at Monogram Pictures Lone Star westerns, this was his third. Monogram had a stock company to rival the much better one of John Ford. Note how for the next three or four years, the casts are just about the same in every Wayne western at that studio. It gets hard to keep these in chronological order, I wouldn't be surprised if a few of these weren't shot simultaneously.The best you can say about the Monogram films is that they kept John Wayne employed, not something easily said during the Depression. And they beat those serials he did for Mascot. West of the Divide will never be on any John Wayne fans top 10 list.

classicsoncall It appears a little more thought than usual went into this Lone Star Western, as the story line is fairly consistent and director Robert North Bradbury throws in a few elements I haven't seen yet after watching almost all of them. Wayne's character is Ted Hayden, who takes on the guise of wanted murderer Gat Ganns when it might help him get the goods on bad guy Gentry (Lloyd Whitlock). George Hayes, not yet known as Gabby, teams up with Wayne to outwit the baddies and save the day for the Winters (Lafe McKee and Virginia Faire Brown).It struck me that Wayne's appearance in the film bears some resemblance to another cowboy star, Hopalong Cassidy. His character wears all black, including the tall cowboy hat, and he rides a white horse in the story. Of course, Hoppy teamed with Gabby to round out that connection as well.The story itself is fairly formulaic, bad guy Gentry wants the Winters ranch and they aren't selling. Stealing their money and their cattle, and getting rid of Mr. Winters all sounds pretty familiar, with Gentry hiring the phony Ganns to help pull it off. Then he plans to eliminate Ganns as well, by killing him and claiming the reward money. Needless to say, the good guys figure it all out, and the payoff is a beaut. As Gentry staggers out of a cabin following a fight with Hayden, his own men gun him down by mistake - OOPS! Yakima Canutt performs some of the daring stunts he's known for, one involves bringing two buckboard horses to a halt after they've broken away from their rig, with Yak riding the hitch like a pair of water skis. There's a wilder one though, when as Hayden, he dives off his horse and through the window of a cabin in pursuit of Gentry. It's one of the better stunts you'll see Yak perform in this or any movie.Typically, John Wayne gets the girl at the end of the picture, but it's not surprising. Earlier in the story, his character Hayden remarks to Gentry - "...I'll stay at the Winters place tonight, I got a few things I want to pick up". The difference this time out though, the film doesn't end in a clinch between the new couple. Instead, they chase down young Jim Hayden after he embarrasses big brother and Fay into a match up.For trivia fans, you might want to keep that 'Wanted' poster for Gat Ganns in mind if you look up some more of Wayne's Lone Star films. It appears again tacked to a cabin wall in a scene from "The Trail Beyond". Even in the Thirties they found ways to economize.