Buster and Fuzzy Hunt the Outlaw Of The Plains (1944)
There was an impatience about Buster Crabbe's
cowboy that I sort of like. Was this general attitude of a lapsed
Tarzan/F. Gordon peeved at doing westerns by stopwatch? It would beinteresting
to know what they paid Buster per oater. $750 or thereabouts? That's still a
fortune by 40's working folk standard, and might seem a better gig had PRC done
more than mere eight per year. Crabbe would have supplemented with other
things, like swim shows here/there, jungle or prize-ring B's, etc. Was there youth
that preferred Buster and his cheapies over slicker merchandise from Republic,
or did groans greet PRC logos? A development in series western was kids
gravitating to sidekicks and sometimes liking them better than heroes. Al St. John
finessedhis Fuzzy into center ring of the Crabbes. It takes two reels, in
fact, for Buster to even show up in Outlaw Of The Plains. Until then, it's
wall-to-wall Fuzzy and whatever reward or punishment that amounts to for then-or-now
viewers. PRC stinted on action, so pix got/get by, if at all, on personality
of saddle personnel. Retroplex has shown a few in what they call HD, but even w/
doubt as to that, quality is leagues better than PRC westerns have looked for
years.
I like the left lower corner of that poster, where the cowboy is taking dead aim at the PRC logo. Some low-paid drone in the promo department having a little private joke at his boss' expense?
The cut-rate dinginess of PRC Westerns helped to convey a more "realistic" Old West environment than many larger scale Westerns. I've even noticed horse-droppings on the streets of frontier towns in some of the Crabbe-St. John oaters.
John, if you're talking PRC westerns, the HD must mean half a dollar!
I saw some of the Buster-Fuzzy PRCs in TV syndication in 1978 and the prints were old warhorses. Same for the other PRC titles in the package. So anything new would be an improvement over what's been in circulation. Films Around the World, which has held the PRC library for years, has entered the brave new world of DVD-R so maybe we'll see the Buster and Fuzzy hours in something close to their original quality.
I can tell you what Buster Crabbe was doing to bring home the bacon back in the last 60's (besides hawking a wife beater tee shirt with a 'corporation up front'). He was a scuba instructor in Rye, New York. I was hanging out with a college friend and somehow in the conversation I mentioned Buster Crabbe. I don't remember why, my friend wasn't much of an old movie or TV fan. He replied that Buster Crabbe was his dive instructor. I was skeptical but he showed me his dive card and sure enough it had Buster Crabbe's signature on it. It didn't really mean much at all to my friend but it blew me away. I suspect it would have meant more to him if he could have used it to impress girls. Boy, if Buster Crabbe was my dive instructor, I would have pestered him with so many Captain Gallant questions (not being familiar back then with his PRC work) , he probably would have drowned me!
Buster Crabbe! He might have had A movie potential, but he had one talent vital to poverty row productions; the guy had a great fake-sprint, ideal for cramped B movie sets. In all his serial and western work, he's always 'running' up to his mark in a wonderfully stylized trot that didn't exactly take up much yardage yet seemed to convey some sort of recent urgency. Love it!
6 Comments:
Not Buster oriented, but can I have some opinions concerning the box set of Dick Foran B-westerns recently released by Warner Archive.
Are they good pix?
I like the left lower corner of that poster, where the cowboy is taking dead aim at the PRC logo. Some low-paid drone in the promo department having a little private joke at his boss' expense?
The cut-rate dinginess of PRC Westerns helped to convey a more "realistic" Old West environment than many larger scale Westerns. I've even noticed horse-droppings on the streets of frontier towns in some of the Crabbe-St. John oaters.
John, if you're talking PRC westerns, the HD must mean half a dollar!
I saw some of the Buster-Fuzzy PRCs in TV syndication in 1978 and the prints were old warhorses. Same for the other PRC titles in the package. So anything new would be an improvement over what's been in circulation. Films Around the World, which has held the PRC library for years, has entered the brave new world of DVD-R so maybe we'll see the Buster and Fuzzy hours in something close to their original quality.
That looks like Charles King taking aim at PRC.
I can tell you what Buster Crabbe was doing to bring home the bacon back in the last 60's (besides hawking a wife beater tee shirt with a 'corporation up front'). He was a scuba instructor in Rye, New York. I was hanging out with a college friend and somehow in the conversation I mentioned Buster Crabbe. I don't remember why, my friend wasn't much of an old movie or TV fan. He replied that Buster Crabbe was his dive instructor. I was skeptical but he showed me his dive card and sure enough it had Buster Crabbe's signature on it. It didn't really mean much at all to my friend but it blew me away. I suspect it would have meant more to him if he could have used it to impress girls. Boy, if Buster Crabbe was my dive instructor, I would have pestered him with so many Captain Gallant questions (not being familiar back then with his PRC work) , he probably would have drowned me!
Buster Crabbe! He might have had A movie potential, but he had one talent vital to poverty row productions; the guy had a great fake-sprint, ideal for cramped B movie sets. In all his serial and western work, he's always 'running' up to his mark in a wonderfully stylized trot that didn't exactly take up much yardage yet seemed to convey some sort of recent urgency. Love it!
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