Cowboy and the Senorita (1944)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

That was an excellent one.

Captivating movie !

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Cowboy and the Senorita (1944) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Roy Rogers and 'Teddy Bear' (Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams) show up in a small town looking for jobs when they're befriend by a young girl (Mary Lee) and her keeper (Dale Evans). Rogers and Bear are given jobs looking after the young girl and it turns out that she has a valuable mine, which a greedy man (John Hubbard) is trying to con her out of. After several double crosses Rogers tries to get evidence to show what's going on. COWBOY AND THE SENORITA isn't the best film Rogers ever made but it's a decent "B" Western that is also remembered for being the first film between Rogers and his future wife Evans. Overall the story here certainly isn't anything too special as the entire "ripping off someone for their mine" had been done to death by the time talkies came into play. With that said, the director and cast do good enough of a job to at least make you care for the characters and want to see the bad punished and the good walking away without any trouble. It certainly doesn't hurt that the cast members are in such fine form and this of course starts with Rogers who once again plays that kind-hearted soul just doing what's right. That laid back style really comes across good here and that chemistry with Evans is on full display. The two really seem to be flirtatious throughout the film and they manage to mix it up quite well. Lee is also very impressive in her part as is Hubbard as the hissing villain. It was pretty funny seeing Williams in a Western like this as he was often seen in gangster pictures from the likes of Warner. There's certainly nothing ground breaking to be found here but if you're a fan of low-budget Westerns then this here is a decent time killer. It should be noted that the most common version out there is missing nearly twenty-minutes worth of footage most of which is song and dance numbers.

In a joint book about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans that I recently read, it seems as though Herbert J. Yates at Republic Pictures had the idea that Roy could use a regular female singing star, the better to boost the audiences for his number one B picture cowboy at the time. He had under contract one Frances Octavia Smith renamed Dale Evans who had done about nine films in minor roles. She was most prominent in John Wayne's In Old Oklahoma as a second female lead. Dale was understandably reluctant to do the film. Although she was born in Uvalde, Texas her thing was not exactly country/western. She was a band singer and a good one with Anson Weeks. Her ambition was to do musical comedy, she wanted very much to do the lead in Oklahoma and later do Annie Get Your Gun. But Yates was the boss so she agreed and the rest is history.The film they were assigned to is Cowboy and the Senorita and truth be told it's not one of the great westerns of all time. Roy and sidekick Guinn Williams get themselves involved in saving an inheritance of a gold mine from the grasp of villain John Hubbard who's about to marry Dale, the older of the two sisters. Younger sister Mary Lee has run away because she dislikes her prospective brother-in-law so much. Roy and Big Boy save the day of course.Cowboy and the Senorita is only important in that it was the first teaming of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. They did several pictures over the next few years and eventually married after Roy's first wife Arlene Wilkins died suddenly. After that Dale only teamed with Roy occasionally until they went to television as she was busy raising Roy's kids, her son by previous marriages and their children.Until I saw this film I never knew Guinn Williams had done any films with Roy as sidekick. The version I have is the edited one for television and I think it's a lot of his footage that was edited out. Apparently he had a rivalry going with Fuzzy Knight that looked interesting and funny and I'd certainly like to have seen more of it.A historic landmark and it shows Herbert J. Yates apparently did have good business sense when it didn't involve his wife Vera Hruba Ralston. On the other hand he could have asked Roy to take Vera as his next leading lady.

"Cowboy and the Senorita" is the very first screen pairing of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and it comes across surprisingly well. The film title is also the name of the opening and closing musical number, and even if not meant to be prophetic, the eventual marriage of Roy and Dale proved to be a wonderful union for film goers and fans of the Western duo.The story involves a missing runaway Chip Williams (Mary Lee), who is revealed to be Ysobel Martinez' (Dale Evans) half sister. Chip needs to find out what her deceased father left her in a box buried in an abandoned mine on the Martinez property. The mine is soon to be sold to Ysobel's fiancé Craig Allen (John Hubbard), and that should give you an idea where the story is headed. Allen and his henchmen have already begun excavating the mine for it's hoard of gold, while busily setting about to frame Roy and his sidekick Teddy Bear (Guinn "Big Boy" Williams) for Chip's disappearance, and later for the theft of two thousand dollars from his personal office safe.To be sure, there are manufactured elements that defy coincidence in the story; Chip discovers her father's missing treasure on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, the day on which her father specified it should be opened. In a letter accompanying the discovered box, it states that a bracelet she already owns (and lost, conveniently found by Roy and Teddy Bear) is her only inheritance, but she should examine it closely for the treasure to reveal itself. Bad guy Craig Allen, Ysobel's fiancé furiously denies his complicity in any cover-up scheme. In an interesting response by Roy, the film's date is put into historical perspective - there's enough gold in the assayer's office to make Allen the biggest liar in 40 states!Since most of Roy's films offer Gabby Hayes or Andy Devine as the comedic sidekick, it's a refreshing change of pace to see Guinn "Big Boy" Williams in that capacity here. The clumsy Williams spends a lot of his time falling down, but he also has a highlight line in the film; when Craig Allen's henchman Ferguson wavers in admitting their role in the mine cover-up, Big Boy offers to "take him to the memory room".The film ends on a quite lavish musical number that starts out with dancers circling a huge sombrero. It's a fitting end to an engaging story, with Roy's arms clasped around not one, but two pretty senoritas - Dale Evans and Mary Lee.

Hi again, Any movie Roy Rogers and Dale Evans are in is a treat for me. This film was very early in their career, 1944. Just a bunch of fun including the Sons of the Pioneers and Mary Lee. Thanks for listening. Florence