Recently, a bunch of fully restored Gene Autry westerns were uploaded onto the Shout Factory channel for the Roku and Amazon Fire devices. Most are gorgeous and feature the full movie...not the abbreviated versions chopped up to fit TV formats. However, "The Strawberry Roan" is, despite the restoration, a really ugly film. This is because they used an inferior color process in the original movie, Cinecolor. Cinecolor films in the early days looked about as good as the Two-Color Technicolor pictures. But both processes were primitive and used a red-orange as well as blue-green pallet...and they achieved a color-like stock. In other words, it wasn't true color and didn't display the full range of colors. However, when Three-Color Technicolor (or simply 'Technicolor') came out in the mid-1930s, it was vastly superior to the two-color processes. Shockingly, despite this, the obsolete Cinecolor process continued to be in use into the 1950s...mostly because it was cheaper and easier to use. But it was also pretty ugly...and over time, it gets uglier and uglier. See the film...you'll see what I mean. Everything looks orangy and greeny (is 'greeny' a word?) in the movie...with no true reds, blues or yellows.
When the story begins, Gene and some of the other hands on the ranch FINALLY catch the beautiful horse who has been running wild for some time. The ranch owner (Jack Holt) is thrilled and his son (Dickie Jones) is even more excited and begs his father to let him have the horse....which he does. Unfortunately, when the horse tosses the young man, he's badly hurt and the father wants to kill the horse. Gene intervenes an the horse escapes. But after the boss and his workers chase the roan, it falls off a cliff and everyone assumes that when Gene went down to investigate he shot the horse to put it out of its misery. But Gene is loathe to kill the pretty animal and later returns to tend to it until it's well enough to return to the wild. What's next? After all, Gene is bound to make his boss mad about saving the animal AND the poor kid...will he recover??
This film has a very impressive cast for a Gene Autry film. Jack Holt was a fine actor in the 1920s-30s and it's nice to see him here. Gloria Henry (the mom on TV's "Dennis the Menace"....and who is still going strong well into her 90s), Dickie Jones (who made tons of cowboy films and was the voice of DIsney's "Pinocchio") as well Pat Buttram are also on hand to lend their support. And, so is Rufe Davis...though his shtick is something you'll either love or hate.
So is this film any good? Yes....in fact, it's among Gene's better films. This is because it's really nothing like any of his films and offers some plot that you won't see in other B-westerns. This is important, as about 90% of all these films feature about 3-4 different plots...but not "The Strawberry Roan". The only deficiency in the film is that there aren't any memorable songs like you'd find in some of Autry's other pictures. Still, I liked how different this one was...a major plus for fans who love the genre.
*If you are curious, this is from the American Roan Horse Association's website: "Roan" refers to a horse coat color pattern characterized by an even mixture of colored and white hairs on the body, while the head and "points"-lower legs, mane and tail-are mostly solid-colored. Horses with roan coats have white hairs evenly intermingled throughout any other color. The head, legs, mane and tail have fewer scattered white hairs or none at all. The roan pattern is dominantly-inherited, and is found in many horse breeds. While the specific mutation responsible for roan has not been exactly identified, a DNA test can determine zygosity for roan in several breeds. True roan is always present at birth, though it may be hard to see until after the foal coat sheds out. The coat may lighten or darken from winter to summer, but unlike the gray coat color, which also begins with intermixed white and colored hairs, roans do not become progressively lighter in color as they age.
