Calling All Buck Jones Rangers
Buck Rides For Columbia in Forbidden Trail (1932)
Buck Jones fits in a somewhat legend category
for fan-love he engendered and heroic way he's said to have died, and though
that last was embroidered by tellers since (1942), it just seems natural that
Buck would have gone back into a burning nightclub to save others after he'd
been safely gotten out (didn't happen, but I'm for printing the legend). More
was written on the topic when Jones Junior Rangers were around to deeper
explore events of that night. It was their generation's equivalent of the
George Reeves tragedy. HQ rendering of Buck westerns, in this case from
Columbia On-Demand, helps us toward understanding where Buck's magic lay,
though leap, ride, and scrap might be better descriptive terms. Here was a
cowboy as often a buffoon, given to lazyboning and practical jokes, thus
underestimated by villainy till too late when he routs them. Forbidden Trail is
typical of the brand, was made for cheap, but not insultingly so (its $87K in
domestic rentals was plenty OK in blighted Depression terms). Columbia's program westerns were ones to beat
during this period when both Jones and Tim McCoy rode for them. Hope more of
these are forthcoming on disc.
Having grown up in New England, I can tell you that the Cocoanut Grove fire was our equivalent of the Titanic, a major tragedy that people who were around then were still talking about decades later. My mother was a Buck Jones fan at the time; she always seemed shaken by the circumstances of his death, the same way John Lennon fans are today.
ReplyDeleteKevin, I remember the subject coming up in pages of "The Big Reel" during the 70's, when a lot more Buck Jones fans were still around, and there was even a revival of the Buck Jones Rangers Club, with more than a few members who'd been active since the original Rangers clubs back in the 30's.
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