This year, as it has in the past, the Louise Brooks Society blog is taking part in the Spring 2024 CMBA (Classic Movie Blog Association) blogathon. This year’s theme is Screen Debuts & Last Hurrahs -- a look at beginnings and endings of film careers. The Spring 2024 CMBA blogathon runs May 20-24. More information on the Spring 2024 CMBA blogathon, including a list of other participants and topics, may be found HERE. I encourage everyone to check it out.
Today's post looks at Louise Brooks' last film, Overland Stage Raiders (1938). The May 20th blog post looked at Louise Brooks first film, The Street of Forgotten Men (1925).
In Overland Stage Raiders, the "Three Mesquiteers" fight bad guys in the modern-day west. The "stages" being raided are buses bearing gold shipments to the east. Airborne hijackers steal the gold, but the Mesquiteers defeat the crooks and then parachute to safety. The film stars John Wayne, on the brink of stardom. Louise Brooks, whose career was fading, plays his love interest.
Work on the film began on August 4, 1938. Overland Stage Raiders was one of two Westerns John Wayne filmed at Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, California -- a well known location for genre films. The other, made a few months after Overland Stage Raiders, was John Ford's legendary Stagecoach (1939).
For Brooks, Overland Stage Raiders was little more than a $300.00 paycheck. For columnists and critics, Brooks' supporting role in this lowly B-western was yet another attempt at a comeback for a once famous star. Louella Parsons wrote "Louise Brooks, who used to get glamour girl publicity about her famous legs, is starting all over again as a leading lady in a Western with John Wayne."
In the Fox West Coast Bulletin, the East Coast Preview Committee noted "The production is well acted and directed and presents several novel touches, as well as excellent photography.” Film Daily thought the “Fast-moving cowboy and bandit story will entertain the western fans. . . . George Sherman directed the picture, and gets a maximum of action and speed from the story.”
Motion Picture Herald noted “This is another outdoor entertaining picture of the west featuring the Three Mesquiteers. The Mesquiteers are usually fortunate in the selection of their stories. They generally have a workable plot. For the patron, too, they are three stars for divertissement. John Wayne makes his second appearance as ‘Stoney Brooke.’ . . . Louise Brooks is the girl in the case. ”
Variety went further, “This series improves with each new adventure. Starting out as typical cow country stories, Republic has seemingly upped the budget as successive chapters caught on. Raiders is as modern as today, yet contains plenty of cross-country hoss chases and six-shooter activity. . . . Louise Brooks is the femme appeal with nothing much to do except look glamorous in a shoulder-length straight-banged coiffure. . . . Should please juveniles and elders alike.”
Besides the few trade reviews, the film was seldom written up in newspapers. (Most serial b-westerns weren't.) Despite Brooks' new hairstyle, and despite her appearance in this lesser film, there is little to redeem it. Brooks adored Wayne, but could not stand the humiliation she felt in this sort of film. Overland Stage Raiders would be Louise Brooks' last movie. She soon left Hollywood, and slid into decades-long obscurity.
As the years passed, John Wayne became of superstar, and in the 1950s his early films were re-released both in the United States and in Europe. And once gain, Overland Stage Raiders was shown in movie theaters, and in the 1960s and 1970s, on television. The posters and lobby cards for the later reissue emphasized Wayne's name, while Brooks' was deleted.
The Louise Brooks Society is a proud, longtime member of the CMBA
(Classic Movie Blog Association). Back in 2018, the CMBA profiled the
LBS. Check it out HERE.
I'm a sucker for a John Wayne western, so I've put this on my Must Watch list.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you contrasted Louise Brooks' career with John Wayne's - one becoming a legend and the other fading into obscurity.
Thank you for reading my blog. Hope you check back again.
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