The uniquely American western genre was the backbone of the fledgling Hollywood film industry, and vintage series westerns are a rich, unexplored cinema territory populated with interesting personalities. By the 1930s all the studios fronted western units, and RKO's got the benefit of top talent like cameraman Nicholas Musuraca and composer Max Steiner. Cowboy star Tom Keene had worked with Cecil B. DeMille and advanced to star in his own western series, playing noble cowpokes with different names but uniformly spotless ethics. His The Cheyenne Kid (1933) was directed by veteran Robert F. Hill, who had been filming oaters as early as 1916. Good stories were remade more than once, and the W.C. Tuttle yarn for this feature had already served as the basis of Man in the Rough (1928), a silent series western for the even more famous Bob Steele. Keene's virtuous rodeo contestant Tom wins a big purse by successfully riding a bronco named 'Widowmaker,' but he then becomes entangled with crooks and gunmen while trying to return the savings of the defenseless, demure Hope (Mary Mason). Tom spends much of the film mistakenly identified as the murderous outlaw Denver Ed, yet with his sidekick Gaby (stuttering comic Roscoe Ates) manages to foil a mining swindle aimed at Hope's father. This was the only script by co-writer Jack Curtis, who had been acting in westerns since 1915. A novel twist has the eccentric Gaby play sagebrush alchemist, trying to make gold by treating ore with a dangerous, explosive acid. BR>
By Glenn Erickson