In Old Amarillo (1951)
A drought is about to end the cattle business. The owner of a canning factory wants to buy all the remaining cattle cheap. He plans to ruin the cattlemen's plans to ship water by train and to seed the clouds for rain. Roy is sent by a packing house to investigate.
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Good story, Not enough for a whole film
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
In Old Amarillo finds Roy Rogers working for cattle baron Pierre Watkin as a range detective investigating a drought that is plaguing all the ranches in the Amarillo area. The foreman of the Watkin ranch, Roy Barcroft, has got a few schemes of his own to take advantage of the drought and clean up in a bad cattle market.Why the film is called In Old Amarillo is beyond me because it is set in the modern day west. One of the schemes used in fact is an airplane trying to seed the clouds so they will rain.Another problem Roy has is Watkin's spoiled son Kenneth Howell who is more at home in a nightclub than home on the range. Watkin's sends Howell to Roy to straighten out, but he falls under Barcroft's influence instead.In the midst of all this Roy takes some time to woo Penny Edwards, granddaughter of another ranch owner, Elizabeth Risdon. Risdon usually played old battle axes in her films, she's probably best known at least in western films as Audrey Long's aunt who Gabby Hayes spanks in John Wayne's Tall in the Saddle. Here she's a nice old pioneer granny.In his later films Roy's Christianity was creeping more and more into his work. When all else fails he calls a cowboy prayer meeting in which he sings the song Wasteland hoping the Good Lord will prevent such a thing happening in Texas and give up with some rain.Of course you know what's going to happen, but you might want to check out the mysterious ways God moves In Old Amarillo.