Randy Rides Alone
About Randy Rides Alone
Randy Bowers rides into Ed Rogers's Half-Way House and finds the customers and the bartender dead, with "Sobre las Olas" still on the player piano and a note warning the sheriff off. Sally Rogers watches from behind a portrait. The sheriff jails Randy. Matt the Mute, who wrote the note, is really Marvin Black. He wants Rogers's $30,000 so he can buy the saloon. Sally learns Randy was sent by the Adams Express Company, helps him escape, and gives him the safe key. He swaps the money for dynamite. Black shoots the safe and blows it up. Randy tells the sheriff who Matt was and gives Sally her money back.
Cast & crew
More about Randy Rides Alone
Harry L. Fraser directed and Paul Malvern produced it for Lone Star. Monogram released it. Lindsley Parsons, then Monogram's publicity director, wrote the script. It was the third story Lone Star bought from him and the sixth of nine Wayne Lone Star pictures Monogram put out in 1934. The working title was Randy Rides Again. Shooting was set to start in late April 1934 at General Service Studios and was held up when Wayne fell ill. Alberta Vaughn replaced Cecilia Parker. Copyright LP4844, 9 July 1934.
Themes
Background
It is one of the 1934 Lone Star westerns, made while the Production Code was not yet fully enforced. Monogram released nine of them with Wayne that year.
Making
A 25 April 1934 Hollywood Reporter item said production was delayed by John Wayne's illness and that Alberta Vaughn had replaced Cecilia Parker.
Look
Archie Stout photographed it. The opening is a saloon full of bodies, a player piano still running, and a pair of eyes behind the portrait over the bar. Carl Pierson edited.
Music
The player piano in the wrecked saloon is playing "Sobre las Olas."
Notes
- George Hayes plays Marvin Black, also called Matt the Mute, before the Gabby Hayes character.
- Yakima Canutt plays the henchman Spike. Earl Dwire is the sheriff. Artie Ortego is a deputy.
- The AFI Catalog lists the running time as 54 or 56 minutes, on six reels.
- Sound was recorded on the Balsley & Phillips system.
- The Lone Star Wayne westerns of this period were budgeted between $10,000 and $20,000.
- IMDb lists a London release on 8 November 1934.
Scenes
- Randy walks into the Half-Way House and finds everyone dead while the piano plays.
- Sally watches him through the eyes of a portrait.
- Black fires into the safe and the dynamite goes off.
Also available
- Internet Archive (RandyRidesAlone)
