Intro.
When I started this blog back in January, I was still able to get a cable channel that showed a Gene Autry film every Sunday. I moved and lost that channel, but I do have a collection of Gene's films that I've been saving for a rainy day. Despite being a sunny day, I just needed something sweet, simple and fun. I had heard of Man from Music Mountain and while chuckling at the name, decided it was the perfect way to unwind. Overview
Man from Music Mountain begins with the opening of Boulder Dam. Power line routes are being laid out, and any land around those lines promises to profit. Two shady businessmen decide to take advantage of the situation and start selling land in Gold River, including a stake in the nearby mine to every landowner. Many entrepreneurs take the deal, but upon arrival, discover that Gold River is an abandoned ghost town. Gene Autry runs into these folks on their way to town and realizes that he knows the no-good land baron, Scanlon (Ivan Miller). Autry tries to get Scanlon to stop the scam, but it doesn't work. Meanwhile Gene's sidekick, Frog Millhouse (Smiley Burnett), is taken in by the deal and winds up with some land and a stake in the mine. Gene's invested now, so he agrees to help the townspeople as they try to make the best of the situation. They all still believe that the power lines will come through, but Gene has his doubts. When they discover the mine's been worked dry and abandoned some twenty years ago, Gene and Frog hatch a plan to plant some gold dust from Gene's father and start a rumor that the mine's really profitable. That of course makes Scanlon very upset and he tries to first discredit Gene, and then to buy back everyone's shares while they still think it's a hoax. The rumor starts a gold rush and the town grows, which really helps the early settlers, but makes Gene really nervous. Anyway, it all ends with a shoot-out in the mine and a very fortunate discovery!
Highlights (and a quick story)
As with most of Gene's earlier films, the music is fun and the story is pretty lighthearted. I had some issues first with the slightly racist joke made by an African-American woman who works at Gene's ranch (still much better than Carolina Moon). And while I applauded the fact that there were two very ambitious women in the earliest settlers who open their own salon, they weren't in keeping with the usually strong female leads that often featured in Gene's films. Sure they ran their own business and managed to give Gene a manicure (more on that later), but they still relied on the men for everything and didn't fight their attentions. I missed June Storey's competition with Gene or Irene Manning's use of a rifle to defend herself. But in all honesty, they are still not the maidens strapped to the railroad tracks by an evil villain with a black mustache. They choose to strike out on their own as "modern pioneers" and handle their difficulties with a laugh and a smile. "Modern Pioneers" is a great title too, as this is a typical thirties Western, where the good guys are the hard-working cowboys and the bad-guys are tech-savvy crooks. I swear in all these films, there's usually a group of cowboys who get run off the road by some vehicle (bus, truck, you name it) and then later the cowboys prove that horses are better because those same vehicles get stuck in the mud or in a river or in a ditch somewhere. It's a great triumph of the hardworking homesteaders against the rich and mighty.
The musical accompaniment was also well done. Not only do we have Gene's usual singing ranch hands (was that asked in their job interview? Can you rope a steer and then break into three part harmony?), but there's also Polly Jenkins and her Plowboys, a western band lead by a woman. Gene gets to do a few of his own numbers of course, the best being "Goodbye Paint" which is actually really depressing because it's about a cowboy saying goodbye to his dying horse. Anyway, I wanted to take a minute and talk about Gene Autry as a singing cowboy and what that meant for the Western film genre. I know I've mentioned it before (like in Public Cowboy #1), but the addition of a singing cowboy to films helped make Westerns appeal to women, thus increasing the audience and helping save what would have been a dying genre. But there's an interesting genre mix going on when you take a traditionally masculine genre like a Western and add in a typically feminine genre like a Musical. I almost fell over laughing when Gene goes to visit the women in the salon and finds himself subjected to a manicure. When his friends come in and start making fun of him, he is quick to his feet and shoots a warning at them, then forces them to also get manicures. It's like a hold-up in a beauty salon all with the song, "Burning Love." The perfect marriage of Western and Musical, with a subtle wink to the name, the "Lavender Cowboy." It made me reconsider the gender coding of the parent genres and wonder about some underlying homosexual innuendo. It seems funny that Gene is so quick to defend his right to get a manicure (even if the manicurist is a very pretty woman).
And that leads me to my brief story. At work, we had been talking about how films are marketed to female audiences - very few are when you think about it, and the ones that are still stereotype women. One of my coworkers brought up a good point that in the new Twilight films, men are being objectified the way women have been for centuries. I got to thinking about how this changes the audience and the marketing of these films and realized that on a similar level William Holden had also done this in the film Picnic. I mean, that whole film revolves around him being shirtless and causing all the women to go a bit nuts. But on a different level, Gene's films could also be argued to have been marketed to men and women equally. When I brought this up, Catherine looked at me and said "so was he a Chippendale cowboy?" I'm not too sure what Gene would've said to this, but I had a good laugh. No, there was no shirtless-ness (he was still an idol of kids, remember) and definitely no kissing! Anyway, the point of the story is that if we really want to consider targeted audiences, it goes back further than just glittery vampires.
A solid film on many fronts, Man from Music Mountain is a pretty typical B-Western. It's a fun ride if you don't take it too seriously. The ending might make you groan a bit, mainly because the women turn into airheads, but whatever. It's Gene Autry and he sings and gets fabulous nails. What more could you want?
P.S. Sad but true: I couldn't make out the year on this film's title screen, so I tried to guess as I watched. Based on Gene's appearance, his sidekick and supporting cast and the general feel, I guessed 1938. Turns out I was right. I'm not sure whether or not to be proud of this....
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