Puttin’ on the Risks: ‘The Lucky Texan’ Was a Bold Film

A lot of people get bored watching old films. They complain that they just don’t have the daring stunts and visuals of today’s films. While that can be true of many older films, The Lucky Texan does its best to destroy that stereotype. It’s one of the more exciting Westerns of early Hollywood.

For the 1930s, The Lucky Texan boldly dared to go places with its cinematography that other movies hadn’t yet. Its scene transitions, though jarring and confusing at times, remind me of Star Wars screen wipes; they define the film with a unique charm. Its stunts remind me of early action films from the 60s and 70s. Though the punches in fistfights clearly don’t connect, The Lucky Texan makes up for it with its other daring feats. It’s a Western that dares to push the envelope of what movies could do at that time.

Those Transitions, Though

One of the first things you’ll notice about The Lucky Texan is that doesn’t feel like a 1930s film. The scene transitions especially feel more modern with how sudden they are. Though they move our characters through the story, they can be a little perplexing at times.

Sometimes these transitions will come in the middle of a chase, which makes it hard to determine where our characters are positioned. One moment they are running to the left of our screen, the next our screen has panned over to the left where our characters are in a completely different setting. They aren’t very smooth transitions and tend to confuse more than they elaborate.

However, director Robert N. Bradbury took a risk with the film’s cinematography and I can respect him for taking that risk. In the 1930s when films were still using fade transitions and other less experimental techniques, Bradbury decided he wanted his film to be different. This Western definitely sticks out in the pack because of that risk.

Some Creative Stunts

One thing about John Wayne films, they’re going to make The Duke look cool. The Lucky Texan achieves this goal with some really cool-looking tricks. The one that stands out the most to me is near the end when Jerry (Wayne) chasing down the sheriff’s son, who robbed the bank and framed Jerry’s father figure, Grandy (George “Gabby” Hayes).

The sheriff’s son is able to escape down the hill on horseback, leaving Jerry in the dust. However, Jerry has a trick up his sleeve. He grabs a long branch and leaps into the nearby wash. Using the long branch to steer, he essentially water skis down the wash, beating the sheriff’s son down the hill so he is able to apprehend him.

The clip below, though grainy and a bit hard to see, shows this stunt. Even by modern standards, it’s a really cool stunt and the fact that it’s from 1934 makes it doubly so. Never has a man looked so goofy and so cool as John Wayne riding a branch down a wash.

Modernizing the Western

Though The Lucky Texan was filmed in the 1930s, it has a modern look at the Western. So many Westerns take place in the mid to late 1800s. There are no cars or big buildings or any sort of modern amenities. It’s rough and tough and full of cowboys and outlaws.

The Lucky Texan is a bit different in how it portrays the Wild West. This Wild West is in the early 1900s, when the innovation of America was really kicking off. The Lucky Texan doesn’t just have a horse chase, it also has a car chase. Sure, the car is primitive and it’s chasing a train car, but it’s still thrilling to add an element of modernity to a genre that embraces history.

Something else I found interesting was the fact that Jerry was returning from college at the beginning of the film. Having an educated cowboy rather than one that just learned through the “School of Hard Knocks” was an unexpected yet welcome addition to the film. It felt more relatable to a modern audience than other Westerns do.

Fight Scenes

The only thing that wasn’t risky in this film was the fight scenes. Faking a fight was not a Hollywood strong suit yet. You could clearly see in all fight scenes that every punch that was thrown did not connect with a single thing. The fight scenes had the feel of a kid filming a movie with his friends. Nothing was realistic and the reactions were quite over-the-top.

There’s a fight scene between Jerry and the sheriff’s son that ends up being more comedic than intense. John Wayne would throw a punch at least a foot or two in front of the other character and the other character would fly back like he’d been hit by a truck. Even in 1934, I can’t imagine that audiences would have found that believable.

I can’t ask too much of a movie made in 1934 though, especially one that did some really cool stuff in other areas. Technology hadn’t progressed very far in the cinematic world yet. I watched this film in color but it was originally shown in grainy black and white (as seen in the clip above). For when it was made though, The Lucky Texan took some daring risks that sets this movie up as one of the great early Westerns.

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