THE THREE MESQUITEERS: Republic Pictures Westerns
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They were Tucson Smith, Stony Brooke and Lullaby Joslin; for a while, they were also Rusty, Rico and the Masked Rider; but one name everyone knew them by was the Three Mesquiteers – a hard-riding, wisecracking trio fondly remembered as the heroes of one of the liveliest Western series ever to gallop across the matinee screen.
Between 1935 and 1943, their adventures were chronicled in 53 movies, a record for fictional cowpokes topped only by the Hopalong Cassidy films. But while the Cassidys depended on the presence of irreplaceable William Boyd, the Mesquiteers were played over time by sixteen different actors. Unlike other Western series it was the concept, rather than the names on the marquee, that kept those Saturday afternoon crowds bellying up to the box office.
Tucson, Stony and Lullaby were the offspring of prolific Western pulp writer William Colt MacDonald, who carved a long career out of ten-cent monthly magazines with names like Quick-Trigger Western and Lariat Story Magazine. MacDonald was neither an artistic stylist nor a writer particularly concerned with authenticity – in his 1933 novel Law of the Forty-Fives, Tucson Smith intimidates a gang of bad guys with an arch and rambling speech comparing himself to a doctor who dispenses little lead pills to those in need, a textbook example of straining for effect (not to mention, how not to write believable cowboy dialogue) – but he could crank out action scenes like nobody’s business and whipped his stories along from one vivid scene to another. It’s no surprise that his work caught the eye of the Hollywood B Western factories, and had already seen over a half-dozen of his stories adapted to the screen (mostly for veteran star Tim McCoy) before the Mesquiteers came along.
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MacDonald didn’t invent his famous cowboy trio concept – in fact, he cribbed it, along with the “Three Mesquiteers” name, from fellow pulp writer Eugene Cunningham’s story Riders of the Night – but MacDonald was the man whose work would put both notions on the map. He brought his threesome together in 1933 in the aforementioned Law of the Forty-Fives, and two years later, it was adapted to the screen – the first in a string of Mesquiteer pictures that would continue unbroken for nearly a decade.
That first film was a 1935 Normandy Pictures release, retitled The Law of 45’s, starring Guinn “Big Boy” Williams as Tucson, Al St. John as “Stoney”…and no one as Lullaby, an omission that’s often dismissed as a hatchet job by critics and historians who don’t seem to realize that Law of the Forty-Fives isn’t really a Three Mesquiteers novel, not quite.
In fact, Tucson and Stony had been created by MacDonald as a pair of crime-busting drifters in 1929, and most of the novel Law of the Forty-Fives is just another of their adventures. During the course of the story, they meet deputy sheriff Lullaby Joslin…and when Stony is drygulched and seriously wounded, Lullaby steps in and helps Tucson bring the bad guys to the rough justice they deserve. And in true pulp fashion, that justice includes a climactic saber duel on horseback between Tucson and a Russian Cossack. With all the villains six feet under, Lullaby decides to join Tucson and Stony on the trail – but not until the last page of Tucson and Stony’s final adventure as a twosome.
Big Boy and Al
From that perspective, it’s easy to see why Lullaby was dropped from the film version. Despite his importance in the novels that would follow, in Law of the Forty-Fives he’s essentially a supporting character who stands in for Stony in the final chapters, an expendable complication in a 56-minute film that was never intended as anything more than a stand-alone programmer.
For the same reason, The Law of 45’s takes a lot of liberties with its source material. “Stony Brooke” is renamed “Stoney Martin,” and all that remains of the original story are a shootout in an atmospheric smoky cantina, and the well-played scenes involving “Stoney’s” ambush. Otherwise, it’s a slow-moving and frequently creaky little oater with little to distinguish it from all the other cheaply thrown-together cowpoke programmers of the early Depression years.
(Typical of many a low-budget Western of its day, the film is not only inconsistent with its source material, it’s even inconsistent with itself. While the publicity materials refer to it as The Law of the 45’s, the title in the credits reads, The Law of 45’s. Welcome to Poverty Row.)
Silent film comedian Al St. John, nearly clean-shaven and still several years away from his well-known “Fuzzy” persona, makes a game and good-hearted “Stoney,” griping about the lack of excitement and ever ready to back his pal’s play – good for a gentle laugh, but nothing like the silly figure he would become when the comic relief sidekick fully came into vogue.
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Tucson Smith was the star of the novels, too busy talking tough and blowing away the super-villains of the Old West to fool around with romance. But The Law of 45’s is first and foremost a Big Boy Williams vehicle, and he not only gets the lion’s share of the action, he also gets the girl. If a good deal less canny than the hero of the novels, Williams’ roughhewn Tucson is still closer to MacDonald’s concept than we’d see in most of the films to come. It’s a pity that the budget necessitated changing the climax to a simple fistfight; Big Boy Williams crossing swords with a mounted Cossack would have been one of the great surreal moments of ‘30s filmmaking.
While The Law of 45’s is hardly a milestone, it’s far from the worst Western cranked out by Poverty Row – and if the fans of MacDonald’s trio were disappointed by the liberties it took, they had only a few months to wait for the greatest Three Mesquiteers movie of them all: Powdersmoke Range.
Instead of tiny Normandy Pictures, this time the studio was top gun RKO, and the result was something bordering on first class. A big-budget “special,” at 72 minutes it’s the longest Mesquiteers film ever made and the most faithful adaptation of any book in the series.
But the real drawing card was the cast – such a huge array of current and former cowboy stars that RKO touted the film as “The Barnum and Bailey of Westerns!” The supporting players included seven former headliners from the silent oaters. Younger heroes Bob Steele and Tom Tyler, on loan from their own starring series, were prominently featured in major roles. And best of all was the trio assembled to play the Mesquiteers themselves: Harry Carey as Tucson, Hoot Gibson as Stony and Big Boy Williams again, this time as Lullaby.
Robert Livingston, Syd Saylor and Ray Corrigan
The picture gets right down to business with the Mesquiteers riding in to check on the progress of the Guadalupe Kid (Bob Steele), a young badhat who’d seen the error of his ways in Law of the Forty-Fives (the novel, that is; he isn’t in the movie version). In short order, they’re embroiled in a plot by land-hungry Steve Ogden to possess the Kid’s spread at any cost. Too smart to take on Tucson man-to-man, Ogden sends for a hired gun – Sundown Saunders, “the fastest draw in the Southwest” (Tom Tyler), who challenges Tucson to a showdown.
In the finest scene in the picture, Steele tries to talk Tyler out of the job…but Sundown’s a nihilist who doesn’t care if the other Mesquiteers come after him or not. “Life ain’t such a sweet proposition anyway,” he says, “just a matter of three squares a day, 40 winks and a lot of powdersmoke.”
In a nice twist, Tucson bests Sundown without killing him. The gunman refuses Tucson’s attempts to reform him, but ultimately undergoes a change of heart and takes a bullet meant for the Mesquiteer. He dies with an ironic smile on his lips. “It just wasn’t in the cards for me,” he says.
As a killer haunted by his wasted life, Tyler nearly steals the show from his powerhouse co-stars. Gibson, craving excitement and eating nonstop, manages to hold his own by bringing an assured light touch to Stony. As Lullaby, the powerful-looking Williams is laconic and humorous. But there’s no doubt that Harry Carey is the star of Powdersmoke Range, and he is terrific – avuncular, flinty, and tough as an old boot as he ambles through the picture in a black hat the size and shape of the Chrysler Building, mowing down everybody who gets in his way. Out of all the many movie versions, Carey’s performance is the closest we get to MacDonald’s ultra-competent Tucson Smith. Even during those moments when the action flags and the dialogue sequences stretch on a little too long, Carey’s is an electrifying presence.
Max Terhune, ventriloquist
Tucson returned, sort of, in another Normandy Pictures release the following year, a 60-minute quickie called Too Much Beef. In this story of cattle rustling and gunplay, Rex Bell stars as Cattleman’s Association detective Johnny Argyle, who takes the alias “Tucson Smith” while running his investigation. One can’t blame Bell’s character for the name switch – who’d want to be known as Johnny Argyle under any circumstances? Sorry, Rex; it doesn’t count. And it would be the last time any other studio would play fast and loose with the name of one of MacDonald’s Western trio – for that same year, Republic Pictures kicked off their long-running Three Mesquiteers series, and every cowboy-loving kid in America would know who the real Tucson Smith was. And it wasn’t Rex Bell.
Compared to the big pictures of 1935, Powdersmoke Range was only a modest hit, but that was more than enough for the likes of newly formed Republic Pictures, who saw the potential for a long-running Saturday matinee series. The ambitious little Poverty Row studio snapped up the rights to the Mesquiteers in the blink of an eye, and committed two of their most promising action stars to the project. Robert Livingston, a personable leading man who’d just played the screen’s first talking Zorro in The Bold Caballero, was cast as Stony. Ray Corrigan, fresh from his first starring role in the hit serial The Undersea Kingdom, came aboard as Tucson. Comedian Syd Saylor as Lullaby rounded out the trio in the opening installment, released September 22, 1936 (almost a year exactly after Powdersmoke Range’s Sept. 27, 1935 premiere) and titled simply The Three Mesquiteers.
Powdersmoke Range poster
Saylor, an Adam’s apple-bobbing comedian, must have struck William Colt MacDonald’s readers as an odd choice as a member of the heroic trio…but with the second film, Ghost Town Gold, he was replaced by vaudevillian Max Terhune, and things went from odd to downright bizarre. A juggler and talented sleight of hand artist, Terhune was also a ventriloquist who brought his unsettling dummy Elmer along for the ride in the Mesquiteers films, often pictured in the saddle with Elmer on his arm, both of them merrily drawling away while flanked by their strapping two-fisted partners. An amiable lug who often seemed to be grinning at some private joke, Terhune was popular among the younger fans, and at first his Lullaby more or less carried his own weight in the films’ action set pieces; but later scripts would paint him as so intrusively stupid that his scenes became painful to watch.
An even more radical change was the relationship between Stony and Tucson. Cueing off Stony’s established yen for excitement, Republic capitalized on Livingston’s bigger name by reversing the balance in MacDonald’s stories to make him the focus of the series as an impetuous young cowpoke forever getting into scrapes from which the long-suffering Tucson, now almost a secondary character, had to rescue him.
Pioneers of the West movie poster
Not that such departures mattered much to the Saturday matinee crowd, who made the series a hit from the start. Cranked out in batches of eight, each shot in about a week’s time, the Mesquiteer films were marvels of fast action and simple, vivid characterizations, gloriously slick examples of the B Western at its best. Updated to that budget-saving fantasy the “Modern West,” Riders of the Whistling Skull and other MacDonald stories were followed by a string of original screenplays that brought the total to 16 hour-long films in the first two years. Illness forced Livingston to skip the tenth entry, The Trigger Trio – but Republic kept giving the fans their money’s worth by casting Ralph Byrd, star of the popular Dick Tracy serials, as Tucson’s brother Larry.
That was only Livingston’s first leave of absence from the series, though. In 1938, Republic moved him to bigger projects and replaced him with a struggling journeyman actor named John Wayne. Years later, Wayne would complain that the Mesquiteer films “were kids’ movies…horrible monstrosities” – an unfair description even factoring in Elmer. But the Duke was frustrated, having crawled back to Republic after quitting the studio to escape the stigma of B Westerns. After months of unemployment, his only choices were the Mesquiteers or the breadline.
Corrigan was also dissatisfied. In just a few years he’d worked his way up from personal trainer to stunt man to serial star – but in the Number Two spot reserved for Tucson, he seemed to have stalled. He became surly on the set, resenting Livingston and Wayne for occupying the top spot. Evidently, Terhune was the only happy guy on the set; but then, he always had Elmer to talk to.
Jimmie Dodd, Tom Tyler and Bob Steele
Despite all the sulking behind the scenes, the eight films with Wayne were the apex of the series: glossy, well acted and nicely varied in their storylines – busting spies in one, rescuing a circus in another, and in the surprisingly dramatic Wyoming Outlaw, failing to save a young man (the dynamic Donald Barry) from social forces that turn him into an outlaw and finally end his life.
By the time Wayne’s eight-picture run ended, he’d been loaned to John Ford for Stagecoach and his B Western days were numbered. But even before Wayne’s departure, Terhune had quit the series. He was replaced by Raymond Hatton, a veteran character actor who brought much warmth and talent to the rechristened “Rusty” Joslin. The best Third Mesquiteer of all, Hatton would play Rusty in nine films.
With Wayne’s departure, Bob Livingston – who hadn’t made the splash that Republic had hoped for – returned to his old role of top Mesquiteer. Fed up, Corrigan followed Terhune out the door, leaving another gap to fill. The job went to future Cisco Kid Duncan Renaldo, who joined the series in 1939’s The Kansas Terrors as Rico, a young Caribbean rancher who teams up with Stony and Rusty to fight corruption on his native island. He rode with the boys for seven films, cutting a dashing figure with his fancy black duds and pencil mustache.
Duncan Renaldo on the left
To keep things fresh, Republic moved the setting back to the Old West, which gave the series a shot in the arm. A less brilliant move was capitalizing on Livingston’s recent role in the serial The Lone Ranger Rides Again by having Stony don a black eye mask at times to leap into action as “The Masked Rider,” doing pretty much the same things Stony had always done when his face was uncovered. The films remained slickly produced entertainment, but at such moments the series finally descended to the kiddie level of John Wayne’s nightmares.
In mid-1940 Hatton and Renaldo moved on and Republic went back to basics with the return of Tucson and Lullaby. Livingston, no longer in that silly mask, was joined by fan favorite Bob Steele as the new Tucson. Hillbilly comedian Rufe Davis was the least effective Lullaby of all, a standard-issue rube sidekick with none of the color contributed by his predecessors, but he did his best with the material he was given. Stony remained the central character, but shorn of its old brashness, the role was becoming increasingly generic. After the 1941 Gangs of Sonora, Livingston said adios to the part forever.
Gunsmoke Ranch movie poster
Steele welcomed the decidedly un-impetuous Tom Tyler as the new Stony, and for the rest of the series the reformed bad guys of Powdersmoke Range played the good guys who’d reformed them. Steele was compact, authoritative and genial; Tyler, with his steely gaze and metallic voice, seemed dangerous even when playing heroes. The contrast made a fascinating team.
Jimmie Dodd took over as Lullaby for the final six installments, a change for the better. Dodd, who would later slip into a pair of Mickey Mouse ears to become the head Mousketeer for a future generation, strummed a mandolin and looked like Howdy Doody, but his humor was gentle and character-driven and his Lullaby was never a dope.
By this time, the series had lost much of its gloss and ingenuity, returning to the Modern West setting and replacing the entertaining formula of the old days with by-the-numbers fistfights and knockabout humor. With few exceptions (a notable one being the cowboys-versus-Nazis adventure Valley of Hunted Men), the stories had become standard Western fare, the characters of Stony and Tucson written to be increasingly interchangeable. Somehow Steele, Tyler and Dodd managed to make it all work – but it was as though the stars had become vehicles for the films instead of vice versa.
Lobby card for "Call the Mesquiteers"
The Mesquiteers ended their careers punching and riding their way through minor adventures that were a far cry from the wild Indiana Jones-like action of Riders of the Whistling Skull or the social concerns of Wyoming Outlaw. With 1943’s Riders of the Rio Grande, the series came to an end – a shadow of its former self but, thanks to its stars, still holding on to some of its dignity.
Like many Republic products, the Mesquiteers movies were re-released in the ‘50s and eventually turned up on television. But where their contemporaries Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy succeeded in capturing a new generation with original stories for the home screen, no similar attempt was made with the Mesquiteers. Over the decades they slowly faded into obscurity, remembered only by a few aficionados and 16mm collectors…until the 1990s, when a one-two punch of the cable Encore Western Channel and the release of classic Republic material to the home video market made them accessible again. From video tape to dvd, the Mesquiteers films have remained constantly available to this day. Even the obscure The Law of 45’s has been made available on the collectors market. Only Powdersmoke Range remains elusive, but it’s out there and worth the effort – like 52 other films, a tribute to the imagination of William Colt MacDonald, and the 16 men who brought the Three Mesquiteers to life.
The Mesquiteer series might have run even longer, but their success inspired so many imitators that by 1943, they’d been rendered almost commonplace by all the three-man teams that stampeded out of the Monogram and PRC studios. The Range Busters, the Rough Riders, the Trail Blazers and the Texas Rangers were the best known knockoffs of William Colt MacDonald’s trendsetting characters, and many of those groups included former Mesquiteers.
The actors who played Stony, Tucson and the gang were trailblazers, but they were also the nexus of virtually the whole wide range of Saturday matinee cowboys, nearly all of whom passed through their little corner of the West at one time or another. The number of top hands each man encountered over the course of his career is impressive; if you spread the associations out a little further, a la the old game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” the total is staggering.
