Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

OVERLOOKED OATER: THE DESERT HORSEMAN (1946)

 He was every cowpoke's sidekick -- Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Eddie Dew, Sunset Carson, Bob Livingston, Jock Mahoney (in a film never released), and Charles Starrett.  Smiley Burnett, perhaps best known to B-movie oater fans as Gene Autry's pal Frog Millhouse, was also a talented musician, singer, and songwriter (he could play over 100 musical instruments -- sometimes more than one at a time -- and wrote over 400 songs, all without ever learning to read music) and inventor (he patented an early home  audiovisual system in the 1940s).

After he left Republic Pictures in 1944, Columbia Studios partnered him with Charles Starrett for the first of 56 Durango Kid films.

In The Desert Horseman, the bad guys, in an attempt to take control of her ranch, murder Mary Ann Jarvis's father and uncle, as well as an army paymaster.  And who has been falsely accused of the crimes?  None other than Steve Godfrey, the Durango Kid.  something has to be done about that, and the Durango Kid is the one to do it!

Am I the only one who watches the Durango Kid movies just for Smiley Burnette?

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-371FzaMhrI&t=28s

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