Cattle Queen (1951)

Maria Hart is Queenie Hart, an orphaned girl who accepts the challenge of running a ranch in the West and succeeds in creating one of the biggest spreads around.

But as she heads into Big Bend on her latest cattle drive, she encounters trouble. A man named Duke Drake has taken over the town and is determined to take over all the ranches around it.

He starts by “reserving” the cattle pens, making sure his herd is sold first. Then he has the legs of Queenie’s cows painted — no joke — so a veterinarian will declare the herd contaminated.

Then, when Queenie is forced to move her cows out of town, he blows up the only water hole at her disposal.

Fortunately, Queenie finds help in the form of a smaller rancher named Bill Foster (Drake Smith). She hires him as foreman and, in a strange twist, he winds up wearing a lawman’s badge, too, and getting the governor of Wyoming to free three life sentence inmates — Shotgun Thompson, Bad Bill Smith and Blackie Malone — to help him out with a promise of amnesty if they succeed.

What he doesn’t know is that one of those inmates is sweet on a saloon girl named Rosa. And Rosa is very good friends with Duke Drake.

Review:

For a movie that was supposed to be about a strong, independent woman, the moral of the story seemed to be that she still needed a strong male around to bail her out of trouble.

That’s hardly the only thing wrong with this B Western. There are a couple of downright silly scenes. Like when Queenie’s cattle are dying of thirst. She gathers her men around and says the Lord’s Prayer. Sure enough, the sky turns black and rain starts falling.

Then there’s the death scene for the Tucson Kid, who had been Foster’s partner. He has one last request … well, two really. “Don’t let them take off my boots. And take care of my horse.”

During that climatic gunfight, Foster runs out of bullets. So he merely grabs a whip and flicks a gun out of a badman’s hand to arm himself. As for how he comes to wear a badge — he’s on trial for murder when Queenie marches all the woman in town into the courtroom to announce that they’ve just held an election and selected Foster as sheriff.

Oh my.

Directed by:
Robert E. Tansey

Cast:
Maria Hart … Queenie Hart
Drake Smith … Bill Foster
William Fawcett … Alkali
Robert Gardett … Duke Drake
John Carpenter … The Tucson Kid
Edward Clark … Doc Hodges
Emile Meyer … Shotgun Thompson
James Pierce … Bad Bill Smith
Joe Bailey … Blackie Malone
Douglas Wood … Judge Whipple
Alyn Lockwood … Rosa (saloon girl)
I. Stanford Jolley … Scarface
Lane Chandler … Marshal Houston
Frank Marlowe … Stage driver

Runtime: 72 min.

Memorable lines:

Alkali, after one of Drake’s men has been wounded: “Hey, veterinary, did you ever doctor a jackass?”

Queenie, praying to God: “Lord, we pray not for ourselves, but for our cattle.”

Queenie to Alkali: “You know I haven’t get time for men. I haven’t met one yet worth shooting.”

Alkali about Bill Foster: “You scared him off by throwing yourself at him. You should have played hard to get.”
Queenie: “I wouldn’t have had him around for a second if you hadn’t said we needed a man like that.”
Alkali: “I guess it’s pretty hard for a gal to play hard to get when she wants to be gotten.”