Bill Slocum About the only reason to see most of John Wayne's Lone Star Westerns is because Wayne is in them. That's certainly true here, as Wayne's character seeks out the man who killed his father and gets caught up in a love triangle.Typically, Wayne's character here, John Mason, doesn't waste time. No sooner does he arrive in town than he gets into an argument with Ben McClure (Reed Howes). The two soon trade blows, followed by friendly drinks at the nearby saloon. Witnessing his father's murder changes the happy situation for Mason, though he still is in the mood for love when a woman McClure is sweet on nurses him back from a gunshot wound.This all happens in the first 15 minutes. Lone Star westerns were typically short, though this is a bit longer than most I've seen at 55 minutes. You have to allow for a rushed narrative, but this one really starves for oxygen, relying on clichés to get across story points.An opening scene features a hombre who is made to "dance" when another fellow shoots at his feet. Mason is warned to get out of town by four o'clock, or be shot on sight. Near the end of the movie, an out-of-luck cowpoke tells Mason that "it's getting' dark...Ain't sundown, is it? You oughta tell Alice I won't be home for dinner..."The dialogue here is quite goofy, and made worse by the strange voices of Wayne's supporting cast. Yakima Canutt's high, sneering register didn't get in the way of his Hollywood career as a premier stuntman, but it makes his villainous barkeep character here tough to take. Dennis Moore as chief baddie Rudd employs a basso profondo baritone, while Marion Burns as love interest Alice (Rudd's sister) uses a tremulous soprano. It's like a real horse opera when one of these two are on stage.Wayne is solid in the main role. Like other commenters here have noted, he had that short-stride, pigeon-toed walk working for him already here, and it's something to see from the opening moments when he strides into town. He demonstrates fine chemistry with the other actors, especially Howes, looking amiable and at ease (even if he should seem a bit edgier after seeing his father murdered in front of him.)There is one good bit in this film, when Mason and an associate (Lone Star regular Earl Dwire, a good player) set a trap for the bad guys and find themselves in a gun battle on a runaway wagon. It looks to be authentic; no back projection anyway, and for a few minutes the film kicks into a higher gear.But then the wagon crashes, Dwire's character is apparently dead and forgotten about, and Mason goes on with the increasingly pointless business of chasing down his father's killer. Soon we are back to Burns caterwauling about her brother's innocence, even if we know better. Why would Mason want such a woman? Why doesn't he confront her brother, instead of banter with him about his neckerchief? "The Dawn Rider" doesn't expect you to care any more than they did, and it shows.

zardoz-13 John Wayne embarked on a promising acting career with director Raoul Walsh's epic wagon train spectacle "The Big Trail" (1930), one of Fox Studio's biggest and most ambitious westerns which also pioneered the widescreen process. Unfortunately, both for Wayne and what later came to be called 'Cinemascope,' audiences flocked neither to see him nor this big-budgeted oater. Consequently, Wayne languished in B-westerns, Saturday matinée serials, and supporting parts for about a decade before director John Ford rescued him from obscurity with his groundbreaking horse opera "Stagecoach" (1939) co-starring Claire Trevor and Thomas Mitchell. This top-notch revenge western not only revived the Duke's career but also ushered in a new era of maturity for westerns. Meantime, until "Stagecoach," when Wayne wasn't toiling in cheap westerns, he played bit parts in bigger movies, such as "The Deceiver" where he played a corpse, as well as "His Private Secretary" and "Baby Face," biding his time until Ford found him. Wayne took second billing to Colonel Tim McCoy in three Columbia Pictures' sagebrushers "The Range Feud," "Texas Cyclone," and "Two-Fisted Law." During this same period, Wayne toplined three sprawling Mascot Pictures serials: "The Shadow of the Eagle," "The Hurricane Express, and a French Foreign Legion version of "The Three Musketeers." Warner Brothers contracted him for a string of modest westerns, including "Ride Him, Cowboy," "The Big Stampede," "Haunted Gold,""The Telegraph Trail," "Somewhere in Sonora," and "The Man from Monterey," but Jack Warner refused to renew his contract. At the same time, Wayne took small parts in non-western melodramas at Warners. The Duke moved on to Monogram Pictures. He starred in 16 westerns for Lone Star Productions. Compared to his westerns at Columbia and Warners, the Lone Star oaters were primitive, poverty row productions. "The Dawn Rider" appeared near the end of the Lone Star series. In fact, "The Dawn Rider" was his penultimate appearance for Lone Star Pictures and exemplified the kind of movies that he made for director Robert N. Bradbury. By this time, Wayne was displaying some of the swaggering, masculine charm that he parlayed later into a million dollar career courtesy of John Ford."The Dawn Rider" opens as Ben McClure (Reed Howes) and a town undertaker named Bates discuss the sheer lack of excitement in town. Bates shakes his head and observes morosely, "Oh, this town is too healthy. If something don't happen soon, I'll have to vamoose." Suddenly, they witness a scuffle between two cowpokes on the main street. McClure intervenes, brandishes his six-shooter, and forces the man who started the fight to dance in front of a crowd of folks by shooting at the fellow's feet. This bullet ballet was a western staple. McClure deliberately misses the man's boots by inches. The punished cowpoke collapses in a mud hole. John Mason (John Wayne) rides into town and helps this forlorn figure out of the mud hole. Afterward, Mason challenges McClure to a fight. They tangle briefly in a fist-flying brawl that concludes with them shaking hands. The same day Mason returns home, he watches in horror as his father, Dad Mason (Joseph De Grasse) is shot to death during an Express Company hold-up. All that Mason can make out of his father's murderer is a polka dot bandana. You see, the bad man shoots Dad through a broken window. Afterward, Mason pursues the villains on horseback and blows a couple of the dastards out of their saddles with his well-aimed shots. The villains wound Mason during the fracas. Ironically, it turns out that the chief villain's sister, Alice Gordon (Marion Burns), nurses our hero back to health. Meanwhile, the chief villain, Rudd Gordon (Dennis Moore), pits our ten-gallon hero against his best friend, McClure, and tells McClure that Mason is stepping out with his girlfriend. Of course, Ben is jealous and takes all the bullets out of his gun before he realizes that Rudd has tricked him.This dusty, bare-bones horse opera features a couple of fistfights and gunfights. The scenery is as rugged as the heroes are virtuous, and the villains are nefarious. Stuntman Yakima Canutt plays an evil barkeeper who urges Rudd to kill Mason. Later, Wayne and Canutt battle it out. Watch the ring that Ben gets for Alice because it is a major plot point. Christian Slater stars in the 2012 remake that beefs up the plot considerably but sticks to the basics. The villains in the remake wear flour sacks for disguises, and Slater hero is haunted by his past in a Mexican prison. The John Wayne hero is unbesmirched by comparison. He doesn't have a U.S. Marshal (Donald Sutherland) riding after him with an arrest warrant. The remake includes the plot point about Ben's stolen ring, but the ranch that Rudd and Alice own is endanger of being repossessed. Some of the flavorful dialogue in the original screenplay credited to Robert N. Bradbury and Wellyn Totman, based on a story by Lloyd Nosler is quite good. Bradbury derives some amusing comic relief from the town's sole undertaker. None of this humor makes it into the remake that uses the F-word about ten times and contains more graphic gunfights. No, Christian Slater is no John Wayne, but the remake surpasses "The Dawn Rider."

classicsoncall As in John Wayne's earlier film "Blue Steel", a polka dot neckerchief figures in the plot of this Lone Star production. It belongs to Rudd Gordon (Dennis Moore), the man who killed John Mason's (Wayne) father in a botched hold up attempt. Racing after the bandit gang, Mason is injured, and is nursed back to health by Rudd's sister Alice (Marion Burns). Alice is the object of Ben McClure's (Reed Howes) affection, but it seems she has eyes for Mason. It doesn't take long for Mason to sort things out, and in a final gun battle, McClure takes out Rudd who lies in ambush for Mason, while the saloon owner portrayed by Yakima Canutt guns down McClure.As in most of the Lone Star films, Wayne's character gets the girl in the end, even when he's not trying. In fact, Mason encourages McClure to propose to Alice, even after the engagement ring Ben bought for her winds up stolen. Nevertheless, the film closes on a wagon leaving town, Mason and Alice aboard with a sign on the back reading "Just Hitched Up".If you're a John Wayne fan, you'll give this film a try, but don't expect much. It suffers from clumsy editing, and as typical with Wayne's other Lone Star films, the title has nothing to do with the story.

Tangor John Wayne turns in a better than journeyman's performance in this Thirties'-style formula western. John Mason, returning home from a long absence, arrives at the time his father is killed in a bank robbery. His best friend's girl takes care of him after being shot, leading to tension between these cowboy movie iconical characters.