The Old New West

I've been watching a lot of B-Westerns from the forties lately, courtesy of Roku channel that livestreams an eclectic mix of old movies from its library.  Fascinatingly, a large number of them are actually set in what was then the present day and happily mix traditional cowboys on horses with gangsters driving sedans.  This is especially true of the Roy Rogers movies made at Republic tat create a whole alternate universe where the Old West, complete with saloons, sheriffs cattle drives and single action revolvers co-exists the real 1940s - 'civilisation' is still 'back East', but has apparently advanced to the modern age, leaving the west back in the 1890s.  It's almost surreal, but surprisingly pleasing, this culture clash between old and new.  Perhaps most surreal are those films where Roy Rogers plays himself as a 'singing cowboy' star of Hollywood movies who then goes back to 'the west' for a vacation, but gets involved in some traditional western plot, complete with rustlers, claim jumpers and the like.  One in particular - made post-war in 'Trucolor' and with Andy Devine as the comic relief sidekick - opens in 'present day' Hollywood, on a film set as Roy wraps up shooting on his latest film, before he and his buddies pile into a convertible and drive off into the 'real west', where (apart from telephones and the odd car), time seems to have stood still since 1900.  

Of course, there is historical precedence for this mixing of cowboys and modern technology - prior to World War One, things like motor transport were just beginning to take root in the West, co-existing alongside horse-riding cow pokes and bandits.  That said, by then the wide open rages of the Old West had been greatly reduced by enclosure, as ranchers put up new-fangled metal fencing to make the boundaries of their land, reducing the need for so many cowboys to keep the cattle on the right spread.  So, by the 1940s, the sort of West portrayed in these B-Westerns was largely fantasy.  But an enjoyable fantasy.  Withing these 'modern day' Westerns existed a curious sub-set of 'war time' Westerns, featuring the heroes of various ongoing series suddenly thrust into assisting the US war effort - even these series were normally set in the traditional 'Old West'.  The stars of these series would, for a film or two, find themselves somehow transported to the 1940s, although the characters and their situations would remain the same.  An example I saw recently was an entry in the 'Range Busters' series, which was basically Monogram's even cheaper knock off of Republic's 'Three Mesquiteers' series, where the setting suddenly moves to the 1940s and our three heroes, still riding horses and sporting single action six guns, find themselves rounding up and herding cattle for the US Army and foiling Japanese spies and saboteurs.  Although the war is clearly going on, planes fly overhead and cars full of gangsters in modern suits abound, on the 'Range Busters' ranch, time seems to have stood still.  Oddly, both the preceding and succeeding entries in the series are set back in period, yet it didn't seem to bother contemporary audiences.

As a footnote, I've found that you can date Roy Rogers films according to who the comic relief sidekick is: in early ones it is usually Gabby Hayes, then there's a long middle period with Smiley Burnette (previously sidekick to Gene Autry), before Andy Devine takes over for the post-war ones, (Burnette having moved over to the 'Durango Kid' series to replace Dub Taylor).  There were probably other sidekicks, but these are the main three and constitute probably the best Western comedic sidekicks in history.  Of these three, Burnette probably has to take the title of geatest sidekick by dint of the sheer number of stars he was sidekick to - he was also a successful and popular singer and composer himself, which was possibly why he ended up with the 'Durango Kid', who didn't sing himself, leaving BUrnette as the sole musical performer in the series.