The Royal Rodeo (1939) User Reviews

Cowboys Halt A Coup

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 5 November 2008]

John Payne's first feature film western was El Paso in 1949, but earlier on when he was under contract to Warner Brothers he did this Vitagraph Short about a Wild West Show that comes to a Ruritanian type kingdom in the Balkans. Young king Scotty Beckett is real enthusiastic about it, especially after Payne saves his life after he falls over from the royal balcony.

But Payne has to keep doing it because some of the king's adult counselors are planning a coup d'etat. Payne and sidekick Cliff Edwards foil the plans of plotters Stuart Holmes and Boyd Irwin.

The film is a cut down version of the Ken Maynard feature film Royal Rider and between all that life saving, several musical numbers get thrown into the bargain.

I'm betting that Jack Warner was trying out young contract player Payne to see if he might make a passable singing cowboy. In any event within two years Payne was doing A musicals at 20th Century Fox with Alice Faye, Betty Grable, and Sonja Henie.

And when he got around to westerns again, he sung not a note.

A Cast Gets the Royal Treatment

[wes-connors · 6/10 · 24 April 2014]

In the small European nation Avania, boy king Scotty Beckett (as the small king) likes reading about the western exploits of American cowboy star John Payne (as Bill Stevens). The kid is thrilled when Mr. Payne visits Avania, with his traveling rodeo show. A command performance is arranged. Payne sings "That's the Way to Be a Buckaroo" to young Beckett. The abduction of Beckett and pretty blonde Lucile Fairbanks (as Marianne) leads to a western chase. Payne and comic sidekick Cliff Edwards (as Shorty) also sing a patriotic American song to Beckett, who appears ready to immigrate. This short story looks like a showcase for Payne, who certainly shows star quality, and others. Also getting easy camera attention, Ms. Fairbanks is from that family (the niece of Hollywood super-star Douglas Fairbanks). "The Royal Rodeo" is photographed in beautiful Technicolor by Charles Boyle, and everything looks great.

****** The Royal Rodeo (11/25/39) George Amy ~ John Payne, Scotty Beckett, Cliff Edwards, Lucile Fairbanks

John Payne before stardom in a Warner Technicolor short...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 22 February 2008]

Left-over sets from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD and THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX are used extensively for this lavish Technicolor short in sumptuous color. Obviously, Warner Bros. had spent so much on all the costumes and sets for those films that they put them to use in this short subject featuring JOHN PAYNE in one of his earliest singing roles. (He later joined Alice Faye at Fox in a series of musicals, years before A MIRACLE ON 34th STREET).

SCOTTY BECKETT, who played the son of many a Warner star during his childhood, plays the King of a small European country who is dazzled by American cowboys and is delighted when the rodeo comes to the village with JOHN PAYNE, LUCILLE FAIRBANKS and CLIFF EDWARDS in the spotlight.

Beckett is abducted by a Regent who wants to become the king but saved, of course, by his cowboy hero Payne. Payne and the cast do a few musical numbers, including a jaunty ditty called "In the Good Old American Way", and with the young king returned to the throne there's a happy ending for everyone.

Produced on what looks like a major budget, the color is excellent and the familiar sets look better than ever.

A Bizarre Ending

[Rebel-14 · 10 December 1998]

This film has one of the most bizarre endings of any film I've ever seen. After five people are sentenced to death for trying to overthrow a European monarch, the condemned, some cowboys and and some Indians start singing and dancing together, in a palace throne room, to an annoyingly catchy song called "That's the American Way." The king, takes off his crown and robes to reveal a cowboy outfit. This is a scene you truly have to see to believe!

Not A Royal Good Time

[boblipton · 4/10 · 6 May 2023]

King Scotty Beckett doesn't enjoy being king when they take his western magazine away from him. Happily, the rodeo comes to town, with singing John Payne leading the procession, which means when there's an attempted revolution to knock him from the throne, there's salvation from monarchy-loving westerners like Cliff Edwards.

Like many of the Technicolor short subjects from Warner Brothers in the 1930s, this seems more intent on showing off the vivid colors the process could provide. Perhaps my slighting opinion is colored by a surfeit of movies about fictional European nations and the need for Americans to rescue their royalty. I think not. Still, it's a colorful affair.

Give your country a hooray in the great old American Way.

[pensman · 7/10 · 14 July 2018]

It was a Saturday and I was clicking through the channels when I came upon this starting on TCM. It had John Payne and as I am a fan, I stopped. At first I thought this might have been colorized as the technicolor was incredibly bright. I knew Payne had a good voice and you get an opportunity to hear him hear several times. The story here is incidental as the appeal to American patriotism in 1939. WW II was underway in Europe and Hollywood was trying to get the public geared up for the eventual entry of America; a fate sealed by Dec 7, 1941. If you, like me, stumble across this curio, give it a watch. Honestly, except for a few codgers, I doubt this will ever find an audience anymore.

Does "Oklahoma" and "Prisoner of Zenda" in 15 minutes!

[Zipper69 · 7/10 · 29 December 2007]

Quite the most extraordinary short I've ever seen. Almost like some drug induced hallucination. Made in 1939 when US audiences still believed that European countries were like a Ruritanian comic opera with all the courtiers in primary coloured uniforms with lots of gold braid and the ladies wore frilly peasant styles. Bring in a travelling rodeo and it's singing hero, add the obligatory plot by the dastardly would-be regent, throw in a royal carriage being chased by a posse of cowboys and finish with a rousing song espousing the benefits of Freedom and Democracy and The American Way.

Totally incoherent and delightfully silly, I suspect a bong and a couple of six packs would make this even more enjoyable.

"That's the way the country's run . . . "

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 1 August 2015]

" . . . one for all, and all for one," sing the entire cast of THE ROYAL RODEO, as they prance around in circles, performing "The Good Old American Way" grand finale song. One of the few things that is missing here is a group of unemployed men being herded into deportation box cars slightly earlier during the Great Depression (as documented in director William A. Wellman's classic, HEROES FOR SALE). In Real Life, "all for one" actually meant "all for the One Per Cent." Another absent item, which audiences of the day must have half expected when the music segues into "Dixie," are those "strange fruit" trees popping up by the hundreds around the South during the 1930s, as Lynching ranked among that region's Top Ten spectator sports. Finally, the country of "Ariana's" kid king is decked out in what is, for all intents and purposes, a German SS officer's uniform, then spawning fear in the streets throughout Europe, as this apparent on-screen mini-Fuhrer enjoys a lily White throng dancing around him. (Even the "Indians" seen fleetingly here maintain this 50 Shades of Lightning motif.)

Audacious kitsch

[Neal99 · 8/10 · 30 April 2003]

This amazing short, in glorious Technicolor, brings together disparate elements one would never expect to see combined, except perhaps in a surrealist play - a vaguely European royal court presided over by a chipper, 1930s American-style kid who orders a command performance of a wild west show (which just happens to be passing through the area). Add a couple of songs and some rousing American patriotism, and you have a startlingly audacious slice of kitsch. The disparate elements aren't smoothly meshed; they're strung together with a daring, in-your-face boldness. Hats off to Warner Brothers for this crazy experiment!

Wacky, weird, time capsule of the American Century

[dw-film · 7/10 · 18 May 2023]

Before the Beatles, there were COWBOYS. This cross between Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, the Prisoner of Zenda (leveraging, I believe, a few raw materials from The Adventures of Robin Hood) and a Jeanette McDonald-Nelson Eddy film is an experience that is hard to explain unless you've seen it. Even in 1939, this would have been what the 60's generation would call Camp. But if you like the 1960's Batman, then you'll probably like this. It has all the moral clarity an 8-year-old could ask for, with the happy ending that only could derive from true Americanism, firewood chats, and the blunt purity of men on horses, unused to reducing their habitual life of songs to the prosaic form of prosaic conversation. "Trouble must have increase when troubles are resolved with a gun." Just put on your chaps, don your wide-brimmed hat, and it's dances and songs for everyone!

Isn't this a remake !

[tabsmith11 · 10/10 · 30 December 2007]

Isn't this a remake of MY PAL,THE KING (Universal,'32)which starred Tom Mix and Mickey Rooney? Great stuff! I get tired of those who are either too cynical or too young to "get" the point of such a film. Way back when, we recognized the nature of such movies, but we enjoyed them for what they were---and we did appreciate patriotism! I believe that we were thankful, and trusting, and mature enough to enjoy things as they were; we DID know the difference between sheer entertainment and WAR AND PEACE. Life was getting very real in 1939 with clouds of war expansion gathering across both oceans. The American public had withstood an economic depression which would probably psychologically devastate a majority of Americans today. So---we were willing to suspend belief or critical judgment when a melodrama came along. Would we were so innocent, and kind, and fun-loving today!

Not Your Ordinary Western

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 22 July 2005]

A Warner Brothers Short Subject.

An American cowboy tries to foil the abduction of the young king of Avania during THE ROYAL RODEO he's presenting at the castle.

This pleasant Technicolor diversion, a sort of Grustark Goes West, mixes the elements of court intrigue and rodeo performers with a couple of songs and a little action. John Payne plays the cowboy hero, Cliff Edwards (sans ukulele) is his sidekick, and Scotty Becket is the boy monarch.

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

A condensed afternoon at the movies!

[Edisone · 10/10 · 28 January 2006]

Wow, this must be the most elaborate one-reeler I've yet seen! Singing, dancing, a full and excellent orchestral score, cowboys, Injuns, a chase scene, operetta-style 19th Century kingdom ... hmm, what did I leave out? Oh, kidnapping, rescue, swing music, Cliff Edwards waving the flag & singing about the Good Ol' American Way ... hahaha . Beautiful color, virtually every costume in Warner Bros closet... now there are Injuns doing a square dance with the King of Whositland... while Cliff "scats" .... I didn't really write a "spoiler", but just know that the whole 15 minutes is a surprise. Great stuff, this is, but almost any movie at the matinée might seem a letdown, after this bright, cheerful, breathlessly silly spectacle. Look for it on Turner, although Turner never lists shorts in its schedule.

Fair Short

[Michael_Elliott · 26 September 2009]

Royal Rodeo, The (1939)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Silly and rather predictable Western/Musical from Warner has a young King (Scotty Beckett) looking up to cowboy star Bill Stevens (John Payne). The King eventually gets to meet his hero when the traveling rodeo comes to town and sure enough, the King is going to need to be saved from a bad assistant. This film has a few nice things going for it but not the items you might expect. Payne, before becoming a star, manages to be pretty good here even if his line reading is a tad bit hollow. The rodeo stuff is rather bland as we've seen the stunts done various times before and there's really nothing new added to them here. Where the film does succeed is with the music, which includes tracks such as 'Yankee Doodle', 'Oh! Susanna', 'The Good Old American Way' and a couple others. Another plus is the Technicolor, which really looks nice even if the print on Turner Classic Movies is somewhat faded in certain scenes.