Customer Reviews

John Wayne Matinee Double Feature, Number 1: Frontier Horizon/Lawless Nineties [VHS]

5 star:		(0)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Frontier Horizon" a.k.a."New Frontier", is is a typical short Western actioneer at 57 mins.It is a formulaic film from the budget minded Republic Studios, from 1939.It is interesting only because it was the first attempt at film stardom for Phyllis Isley, aged 20 at the time, whose name was changed in 1942 to the better known, Jennifer Jones, at the request of David O. Selznick, her mentor and later husband.

She plays Celia Braddock who assists the "Three Mesquiteers" (whose number includes a young John Wayne playing Stoney Brooke), to prevent a ruthless claim-jumping construction company from stealing the ranchers' properties in their "New Hope Valley".The company had duped the three heroes , in order to build a lucrative dam.Phyllis gets to ride a horse but is given rather a trite and banal script to say.Republic Films churned out these films at quite a rate of knots in 1939 (one a week!) so script quality invariably suffered.After a second Republic Film that year "Dick Tracy and the G-Men, Phyllis and her then husband, Robert Walker, decided they were not being regarded seriously enough by Hollywood and returned back to New York to pursue their still unrealised dreams of stage stardom.

Due to its short run time, this film normally comes with another Republic title, e.g. on my copy "Randy Rides Again" or as here "Lawless Ninet".The present title is only now interesting in order to see the embryonic talent of Jennifer Jones in order to compare to her more mature, later work.Otherwise it is mediocre and I rated it at 3 stars.