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"santa Fe Trail" Shorts
Topic Started: Sep 3 2008, 07:58 AM (199 Views)
JazzGuyy
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I have started looking through the new Errol Flynn Westerns collection from Warner. For the movie "Montana" one of the extras are three (according to IMDB there are more) "Santa Fe Trail" shorts. These are short westerns made in 1942-45 and starring Robert (Inspector Hendeson) Shayne as a buckskin-clad good guy who seems to be a slightly different character/person in each of the shorts, despite the same costume. B. Reaves Eason directed the first two and all three are filled with many of the same actors familiar to us all from the serials. Charles Middleton is especially prominent but the usually bunch of henchman also play those roles here.

Of course, there are tons of stock footage (some clearly dating from the silent era) used here but there is pretty effective cutting from stock footage to new scenes--certainly better than I have seen in a lot of Universal serials.

The plots are pretty mundane and have been seen many times before but here they move right along because they are reduced to about 20 minutes.

Still, even though I had never heard of these before, I found them to be a fair amount of fun, especially trying to remember where I had seen the stock footage and identifying all those familiar bit players. I often think that these bit players who specialized in henchman roles must have done all right in Hollywood since they seem to have worked for all the studios and showed up in lots and lots of B product. It would seem if you were a good henchman in '30s and '40s Hollywood, you could always find steady work.
TANSTAAFL!
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