The Lawless Nineties

source: The Lawless Nineties

The Lawless Nineties

An American Western; A story set in the 1890s about a Federal agent who travels to Wyoming territory to supervise the vote on statehood where he faces danger from the leader of an insurgency who is out to make sure the vote fails by terrorising the populace. With a general theme about the democratic vote being mightier than the gun, this is a fair production with some intrigue and good pacing. John Wayne plays the lead role in a commanding way, dealing out the medicine to the night-riding vigilantes and guerillas; George 'Gabby' Hayes as the respectable newspaper proprietor lends some poignant moments and Harry Woods is suitably cunning and deceitful. While their roles are very stereotypical Fred Toones and Etta McDaniel have great presence when they appear. The story is slight but reasonable for a short feature and tension builds quite well before diplomacy and duplicity gives way to a noisy shootout finale. And an amusingly rapid tying up of loose ends in epilogue.

Federal agent John Tipton heads for Wyoming to supervise the vote on whether to join the Union. One group of locals is using dynamite to terrorize the populace and a local newspaper editor is killed. Better production values, an interesting story and of course John Wayne lifts this above average. It's entertaining and has a seamless pace, though the two African-American characters didn't seem to add much to the story; they were there for comic relief I guess.

John Wayne as a government man aims to bring free elections to Wyoming with the help of Lane Chandler. Who had star power of his own and a stalwart of television Westerns. Harry Woods did an admirable job as the Chairman of the Committee of Law and Order but behind the scenes is up to some dirty deeds. Hard to believe that the clean shaven newspaper man is actually Gabby Hayes. His daughter the beautiful Ann Rutherford was outstanding as the newspaper lady fighting for voting rights. In another irony, she was not actually allowed to vote until years later. Although they played lesser roles it was great to see 'Snowflake' Toones, a standard bearer for Republic and Etta McDaniel.The Lawless Nineties is another fine western from Republic Pictures.

This film was a pretty entertaining film and being a B-film, it was over in under one hour. In other words, it accomplished its modest goals just fine. While this means that compared to other, A-films, the movie might seem awfully simplistic, it was simply meant as a second film on a double-bill. These second features were often made by lesser-name studios and featured lower budgets and actors/directors/writers who hadn't yet established themselves in Hollywood or couldn't make the jump to the higher-level films--hence, the name "B-Movie". For years, John Wayne did many Bs and this one is certainly better than most (such as his "Singing Sandy" and "Three Mesquiteers" films). It gets the job done and the acting, for Bs, is very good. By the way, the role of the Major was played by George Hayes--that's "Gabby" Hayes and wow does he look and sound different playing a more serious role!