\nCast:<\/strong> John Wayne, Muriel Evans, Warner Richmond, Alan Bridge, Sam Flint, Murdock MacQuarrie<\/p>\n
I\u2019m tempted to recycle an old joke along the lines of \u201chow many ears does John Wayne have? Answer: three \u2013 a left ear, a right ear and a new front ear\u201d, but I\u2019d like to think those of you who stumble across these ramblings of mine are above such nonsense. Maybe not though.<\/p>\n
Set in 1889, the story begins with the President of the USA Benjamin Harrison signing off on a land grab whereby the white settlers can lawfully steal large swathes of America from the indigenous natives in the name of Manifest Destiny<\/a>, which thinking about it might have made a better title for the film.<\/p>\n From this land grab arises a new town on the new frontier in a town imaginatively christened as Frontier. The place turns out to be in need of someone capable of bringing law and order to the streets so who do you reckon the townsfolk call on to be the new sheriff?<\/p>\n Milt wisely turns the job down then unwisely decides to tell the local villain, Ace Holmes, played by Warner Richmond, to keep the noise down anyway.<\/p>\n Milt doesn\u2019t even get to make it out of Ace\u2019s saloon before he succumbs to a serious case of lead poisoning, administered in the back by a murderin\u2019 varmint of dubious parentage. Meanwhile, Milt\u2019s son is leading a wagon train of more settlers to Frontier.<\/p>\n On the way, they\u2019re attacked by a group of outlaws looking for food.<\/p>\n When the leader of the gang, Kit, played by Al Bridge, realizes that JW is the lead scout for the wagon train, he offers to pay for the food instead, on account of JW having helped him out when Kit was wounded some years before.<\/p>\n These outlaws are idiots and spoilt idiots at that. Unless I\u2019m mistaken there was plenty of food available for taking out in the wilderness back in those days, mainly in the shape of wild animals and such, but they want to help themselves to food already processed and prepared by the settlers. Shame on them.<\/p>\n When JW finally hits town and finds out he\u2019s now an orphan he takes on the role of sheriff then walks the mean streets of Frontier lookin\u2019 for the gutter trash that done killed his pa.<\/p>\n When he confronts Ace in the saloon both of them are treated to a couple of closeups more in keeping with a Sergio Leone film, with JW looking like he\u2019s out for trouble, and Ace sure looking like he\u2019s going to oblige.<\/p>\n JW tells Ace to close his saloon by six, otherwise, he\u2019s destined for the hoosegow.<\/p>\n Instead of shooting him in the back like he did his pa, dastardly Al sets JW up by luring him to meet a stranger who offers to give up the name of his pa\u2019s killer.<\/p>\n Realising that he\u2019s been set up, JW gets the drop on one of the gang who was threatening to drygulch him, then sends him on his horse towards the killers laying in wait.<\/p>\n They then shoot their own man, echoing a similar scene from the much later \u201cRio Bravo\u201d, demonstrating yet again how much directors like Howard Hawks weren\u2019t afraid to recycle ideas from older films.<\/p>\n JW faces Ace down at the saloon and gets thumped over the head for his troubles. Just as Ace is about to finish our boy off, that nice outlaw guy Kit turns up and saves the day.<\/p>\n In what turns out to be quite a spectacular climax, the opposing forces shoot it out with each other and end up burning down most of the town in the process.<\/p>\n Apart from a couple of funereal dirges interpolated into the action in the style of the Singing Riders from \u201cWestward Ho\u201d, and an inconsequential leading lady and JW squeeze played by Muriel Evans, I\u2019d say the Republic efforts are starting to look rather more entertaining than the Lone Star JW vehicles.<\/p>\n There\u2019s definitely more action to be had, and it\u2019s good to see some more adventurous moves with the camera than usual.<\/p>\n All-in-all I\u2019d say things are starting to look up when it comes to my future viewing experience of the large<\/em> number of JW 1930s films still left to review.<\/p>\n I hope so anyway.<\/p>\n As always, let us know what you think of the review. And if you want to read more John Wayne 1930s reviews<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe New Frontier\u201d should not be confused with the later 1939 John Wayne \/ Republic vehicle \u201cNew Frontier\u201d, which was retitled \u201cFrontier Horizon\u201d. Glad we can clear that one up. Read on, pardners. The New Frontier (1935) Republic, Dir: Carl … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307],"tags":[107],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5600"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5611,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5600\/revisions\/5611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"John](\"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/The-New-Frontier-2.jpg\")
That\u2019s right \u2013 a guy called Milt Dawson, played by Sam Flint, the man who helped lead the first wagon train that brought the people who then built the new town of Frontier and who also happens to be the father of JWs character, John Dawson.<\/p>\n