Range Beyond the Blue (1947) User Reviews

"This was no accident - they shot me on purpose!"

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 15 February 2014]

"Range Beyond the Blue" - what a cool name for a Western movie title, but of course it has no connection to the story at all until you get to the very end and Eddie Dean sings the title song. By that measure, the movie could also have been called "West of the Pecos", the opening tune. However a later song wouldn't have fit at all - "Pony With the Uncombed Hair". Or maybe it could have, who knows.

This was another standard Eddie Dean programmer from PRC with Roscoe Ates side-kicking along as Soapy Jones. It struck me a little odd that the folks of Yucca City made Soapy their sheriff after the real one got shot, just on Eddie's say so. No resume, no background check, heck the pair of them could have been outlaws as far as it goes, but the Forties were simpler times with simpler story lines and not a whole lot in the way of maintaining continuity. For example, the second and third times the stagecoach was robbed, there were six bandits who started the chase and only four of them wound up robbing it. What happened to the other two guys?

The other big leap of faith you have to take as a viewer was when the behind the scenes criminal mastermind Henry Rodgers (Ted Adams) shot hero Eddie when Dean entered Rodgers' office. Wouldn't a real outlaw have checked to see if his pursuer were dead?

Don't get me wrong now. I like pointing these things out as things to think about, but I'm not complaining. I could watch these flicks all day and night if I didn't have to stop and write these reviews. If you need a recommendation to catch this one, I'd say tune in to check out the heroine Margie Rodgers, portrayed by the pretty Helen Mowery. She didn't appear in a whole lot of pictures, but this is one of them.

Eddie Dean and some stolen gold ........

[revdrcac · 4/10 · 27 July 2006]

Eddie Dean appears here in another western programmer from the late 1940's. Dean attempts to put an end to a gold theft ring, and is believed to be killed in the process. His sidekick , Soapy Ates poses as a lawman and Eddie plays a bad-guy. Along the way, a few western songs are crooned by the singin' cowboy.

This was a standard Eddie Dean film...... with a standard formula. There are no big surprises here, but Dean fans will like it well enough. I always liked to see Eddie Dean play a villain...... as he had done in a few films years before.

Look fast for singer JD Sumner, who later became a famous Gospel singer and the leader of Elvis' backup group !!

J. D. Sumner Correction

[jerrykendall_2000 · 12 July 2008]

I noted that a prior contributor stated that J. D. Sumner was in Range Beyond the Blue as a member of the Sunshine Boys. It is true that he was later the leader of the Stamps Quartet, which was Elvis' backup group for the last seven or so years of Elvis' life. J. D. had not joined the Sunshine Boys in time for Range Beyond the Blue, however, with his later arrival with the group often leading to his being improperly identified as a member in earlier films. In fact, J. D. and Fred Daniel appeared in only one movie as members of the Sunshine Boys with that being Prairie Roundup, a Durango Kid presentation, the final appearance in movies for the group. The members of the Sunshine Boys appearing in all movies except for Prairie Roundup were Ace Richman, brothers Tennessee and Smitty Smith, and Eddie Wallace. When the Smith Brothers left the group for a long tenure as The Smith Brothers in the Atlanta area, J. D. and Fred came on board. J. D. stayed from 1949 until 1954 when he left to join the Blackwood Brothers Quartet while Fred stayed until the mid sixties and later sang for several years with the Blue Ridge Quartet. The group of Richman, Wallace, Daniel, and Sumner appeared together as the Sunshine Boys for special events as late as the late 1990's, just prior to the deaths of Sumner and Richman. Daniel died in late 2007 or early 2008 while Eddie Wallace is doing well at age 84 as of July, 2008 and, as far as I know, Tennessee Smith still survives in the Atlanta area.

Awful Script Sinks Decent Singing Western

[boblipton · 4/10 · 3 January 2023]

Helen Mowery runs the stage company left to her by her father. Every time it carries gold shipments, it gets robbed, and the insurance company is threatening to raise her insurance premiums to a level where the company becomes unprofitable. After twenty minutes and two songs, Eddie Dean and Roscoe Ates show up to investigate.

Normally I don't discuss the story of B westerns beyond a brief recap. What's the point? They almost invariably fall into Frank Gruber's list of seven types -- as does this one -- and the writing, while not great, is adequate. This one, however, has real problems, with plot holes, motivation that makes little sense, and a lot of exposition -- Dean and Ates spend a lot of time explaining what they already know to each other, and also what they're going to do. Miss Mowery is pretty, Dean's singing is good, and Robert E. Cline's camerawork is up to the task, but Patricia Harper's script is padded and useless.