Edmund MacDonald in the local buyer for Thurston Hall's packing company. He's also deep in debt to the bookies, who have sent Marc Lawrence and John Harmon to collect. He proposes to them that while Hall is buying at $80 a head, he'll pay $65, and they'll split anything over his debt. But Gene Autry is on the job. He heads over to Hall's home office, where he can't get in. But Ruth Terry has, and while Hall isn't interested in any of the classical stuff, he is enchanted when she claims to be a ranch owner selling him a western music program. Hall started as a cowpuncher, and demonstrates some decent knife-throwing skills and twirls a lariat. He'll follow her back to the first town she's heard of, which is where Autry has come from, rents Autry's ranch from Smiley Burnette, and is getting ready. Meanwhile, Hall comes in and spots the conspirators' plane trying to stampede the cattle, wades right in and wins their affection. When he finds out that he's supposed to be the source of all their troubles, he rouses them to action while trying to figure out what's gone wrong.
It's a greatly enjoyable entry in Autry's series of singing westerns directed by underrated Joseph Santley, full of good humor, pathos, and a fine performance by Thurston Hall -- whose movie career had started with westerns westerns in the 1910s. The music is wide-ranging, with a big production number of jitterbuggers in western gear, aided by the Sons of the Pioneers being the musical group. There is a fine and exciting stunt sequence in which Autry -- or more likely, his stunt double -- has to clamber over a moving train to stop it before it kills the riders. All in all, a grand time.
And it came in under budget! With an estimated cost of $129,808, it priced in at a mere $129,302.
