I am a sucker for older black-and-white westerns from the 1930's and 40's. Anything to do with the frontier, the local town with a general store, cattle rustling and so on, I watch avidly. Not of all these one-hour long westerns of this period (before John Ford and Howard Hawks improved on them hundredfold) are terrific entertainments, and some are rather wobbly paced. "Hell Town," also known as "Born to the West," is not terrific but it is marginally exciting for what it delivers. Its got John Wayne wearing a 10-gallon hat and it has the sweet sugar on top with the added presence of the charismatic John Mack Brown (the only film they appeared in together).
Wayne is Dare Rudd, a penniless cowhand who travels with his partner, Dinky Hooley (Syd Saylor), an anxious lightning rod salesman who tries to sell lightning rods to anyone. The twosome ride into Montana with Dare hoping to make his way to Wyoming. After a gunfight during a cattle stampede in Montana, they come across Dare's own cousin, Tom Fillmore (Johnny Mack Brown), a cattleman and banker who Dare jokingly says, "he's half of Wyoming." Love comes calling when Dare is smitten by Judy (Marsha Hunt) who is Tom's girl. Well, gee, who would Judy prefer?
"Hell Town" is not really a love story and in its 55-minute running time, we need room for poker games where the decks are switched by the bartender; a cattle stampede, which is practically par the course for any western landscape (directly lifted in the opening sequence from random stock footage); several gunfights; rattlesnakes; a double-dealing poker player who is "the best poker player west of the Mississippi," and the usual camaraderie between cowhands about who to trust. Since Dare is about to earn 10,000 dollars for delivering cattle, you know someone is looking to make a buck for themselves.
John Wayne's role as a troublemaking gambler who needs protection, especially in poker games, is contrary to the type of tough cowboy he would famously play later on. Johnny Mack Brown has a certain kind of cool charisma that proved its worth in several low-budget westerns he appeared in. Syd Saylor is frontier comic relief and welcomed in this rudimentary western. "Hell Town" (its new title upon its first reissue) is an engaging enough western as a reminder of the genre's roots in simplicity before evolving into the grander, sometimes darker vision of John Ford and others that followed.
FOOTNOTE: Both John Wayne and Johnny Mack Brown played football in their early years.
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