"Arizona Days" opens with a snappy song on horseback by cowboy star Tex Ritter, but truthfully, that's about as entertaining as this film gets in it's fifty seven minute run. However the DVD print I viewed had a rather disjointed cut following a scene where Tex offers to help a minstrel show owner by paying off a thirty one dollar debt in exchange for a singing gig in the show. It quickly jumps to a ten pace gunfight between Tex and villain Harry Price (Forrest Taylor). Another review of the film states that Price was behind the burning of the minstrel show wagons, so with this scene missing, the movie's continuity suffers in the print I saw.
Syd Saylor is Tex's sidekick, and provides a bit of comic relief with a running gag where he attempts to play a trombone to poor effect. Saylor's film history includes an astounding 360 movies in which he appeared, though uncredited in many of them. My first intro to Saylor's work was as John Wayne's sidekick Dink Hooley in "Born to the West", also known as "Helltown", where he gets a few laughs trying to sell lightning rods to unsuspecting victims.
When you come right down to it, there's not much of a story here, as Tex manages to get the drop on Price's gang in an attempt to secure back taxes that they owe. Tex won the right to collect when he beat bad guy Price to the draw in the aforementioned gunfight.
Poor production values and a consistently dark picture often interfered with this viewer's enjoyment of the film. On the plus side were three tunes by Ritter, including "High, Wide and Handsome", "Arizona Days", and opening and closing renditions of "Tombstone, Arizona". Pretty Eleanor Stewart winds up as Ritter's new bride in the closing scene, even though there was no romance to speak of during the movie, but the image you'll remember is Syd Saylor's character "Grass" Hopper wearing a "Just Married" sign around his neck as he rides the back of the buckboard heading out of town.
Syd Saylor is Tex's sidekick, and provides a bit of comic relief with a running gag where he attempts to play a trombone to poor effect. Saylor's film history includes an astounding 360 movies in which he appeared, though uncredited in many of them. My first intro to Saylor's work was as John Wayne's sidekick Dink Hooley in "Born to the West", also known as "Helltown", where he gets a few laughs trying to sell lightning rods to unsuspecting victims.
When you come right down to it, there's not much of a story here, as Tex manages to get the drop on Price's gang in an attempt to secure back taxes that they owe. Tex won the right to collect when he beat bad guy Price to the draw in the aforementioned gunfight.
Poor production values and a consistently dark picture often interfered with this viewer's enjoyment of the film. On the plus side were three tunes by Ritter, including "High, Wide and Handsome", "Arizona Days", and opening and closing renditions of "Tombstone, Arizona". Pretty Eleanor Stewart winds up as Ritter's new bride in the closing scene, even though there was no romance to speak of during the movie, but the image you'll remember is Syd Saylor's character "Grass" Hopper wearing a "Just Married" sign around his neck as he rides the back of the buckboard heading out of town.