Cowboy Movie Question

[Steven Solsak]

what movie is this scene from and who are the actors in that?

 

[MilesArcher]

 I don't know who the actress is, but I believe the men are John "Dusty" King with the white shirt and Max "Alibi" Terhune with the checkered shirt.   They made a couple of dozen westerns together in the "Range Busters" series for Monogram Studios in the early 1940's.   Terhune had been in the "Three Mesquiteers" series at Republic Studios in the late thirties where he played a character named "Lullabye Joslyn".  He was the comic relief in the group. He was also an accomplished ventriloquist, often working his dummy, Elmer Sneezeweed, into the picture.   He had the same basic role in the "Range Busters" series.  Here is a photo from 1943's "Haunted Ranch".   I think you can see that the men's outfits are the same as those worn in the above photo.

 

Of course, this could have been a different movie, since the cowboys wore the same outfits in most of the movies in the series.  This made it easier to reuse stock footage in several films.  

[Steven Solsak]

Thank You So Much for that info

[MilesArcher]

On 4/16/2020 at 6:06 PM, Steven Solsak said:

Thank You So Much for that info

You're welcome, Steven.  I've been doing a little more digging and now I find that the actress in your photo is named Evelyn Finley and the movie is "Trail Riders", a Range Busters movie from 1942.    It's available on YouTube.  The scene that your photo is from is at about the 25 minute mark.  Here it is:

 

 

Evelyn Finley was the leading lady in several "B" westerns in the late thirties and throughout the forties, but she was better known as the foremost female stunt rider in Hollywood for many years.  She did the stunt riding for many leading actresses including Gale Storm, Loretta Young, Elizabeth Taylor, and Julie Adams.   She was inducted into  the Stuntmen's Hall Of Fame.

  

Do you recognize the outfit?

 

 

So, Steven, where did you find your photo?

[slaytonf]

28 minutes ago, MilesArcher said:

She did the stunt riding for many leading actresses including Gale Storm, Loretta Young, Elizabeth Taylor, and Julie Adams

This must be asking too much, but do you know if she did the stunt riding for Ms. Taylor in National Velvet (1944)?

[jamesjazzguitar]

3 hours ago, slaytonf said:

This must be asking too much, but do you know if she did the stunt riding for Ms. Taylor in National Velvet (1944)?

Evelyn Finley was born in 1916,  and would have been 28 in 1944.    Liz was only 12.      Hey,  it doesn't mean she didn't do the stunt riding.      (not so much because of her age but instead her size as a women compared to a 12 year old child).

 

 

[scsu1975]

Finley got her first break when she visited the set of The Texas Rangers, being filmed in New Mexico. She introduced herself to director King Vidor, and asked if he needed anyone to ride horses. Vidor gave her a job, then had her stand in for Jean Parker. A year later, William Wellman was filming The Light That Failed in Santa Fe. When Finley visited the set, she introduced herself  to Wellman, who said "I have a telegram from King Vidor and he said if you were here I should give you a job." Since she was the only woman on the set, she had to wear a beard and mustache to take part in a cavalry charge. In 1984, she stopped at the location for Silverado and ended up working as an extra and stuntwoman in the wagon train sequence.  "Since everything seems to go in a cycle," she remarked, "I think the time is coming where they're going to have to go back to some westerns and horse pictures. People are getting tired of police and crime and cars crashing."

[MilesArcher]

IMDB, where I got some of my information,  lists many of the movies where she did stunt riding.  The only one of those movies that featured Liz Taylor was "Elephant Walk" in 1954, and yes, Liz rode a horse in that movie, not an elephant.  

One of the movies where Evelyn worked as a stunt rider was Disney's "Swiss Family Robinson" in 1960.  The only person that she could have been riding for was Janet Munro, riding a zebra.

[Steven Solsak]

Wow I Did Not Know That