Somehow or other the music track for this movie was lost at some stage and eventually a somewhat unsatisfactory modern music track was added. Fortunately the original dialogue track survived.
When we’re first introduced to John Weston (John Wayne) we think this is going to be a singing cowboy movie but it isn’t.
John Weston arrives in a little town in the West looking for work. When he almost single-handedly foils a bank robbery the crusty but good-natured Marshal Higgins decides he’s found the man he needs to take on a gang that uses a rodeo in the neighbouring town of Dalton as a front for its criminal activities including a series of robberies.
Weston is going to have romance problems as well. He falls for Marjorie Carter (Polly Ann Young), daughter of Dalton’s leading citizen but he has to play up to sexpot Dolores (Anita Campillo). Dolores is mixed up with the gang and she could provide a way for him to ingratiate himself with the gang.
The leader of the gang is Spike Barton (Edward Peil). He has his suspicions of Weston. Weston has some ideas about how the gang uses the rodeo as a cover for its robberies. He also thinks he’s figured out how the murders were carried out.
A major advantage that B-movies (especially crime thrillers, spy trillers and westerns) enjoyed was that the running times were so short. This one clocks in at just 51 minutes. You didn’t have to think about the pacing. It had to be brisk. There was no choice. This movie moves along very quickly indeed.
There’s lots of rodeo action. It’s all stock footage of course but it’s integrated into the movie pretty well.
There’s lots of action. Of all kinds - shoot-out, fistfights and daring trick riding.
The Big Trail (1930) was an ambitious epic western that was expected to make John Wayne a star but it didn’t happen. The movie flopped. This turned out to be, perversely, a lucky break for Wayne. He wasn’t ready for stardom then, the John Wayne persona was not yet fully formed and he did not yet have the necessary star quality. He spent almost a decade in the B-movie ghetto but when he did finally get his big break, in Stagecoach in 1939, he was ready. He’d gained a vast amount of experience, his trademark persona was now fully developed and the characteristic John Wayne star quality was there in abundance. After that his career never looked back.
In The Man from Utah you can see the process half-completed. He’s starting to get that easy good-humoured confidence that was such an essential part of John Wayne the star.
The Man from Utah is a fun little movie and it’s highly recommended.
My copy is on an ancient long out-of-print Payless double-feature DVD (it’s paired with a Roy Rogers movie) but the transfer is quite acceptable.
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