Dave "Tex" O'Brien has been one of my favorites for a long time. He is best known for his cowboy roles, and/or his hapless character in the "Pete Smith" shorts, but here he proved once and for all that He Was An Actor.
Kay Aldridge, best known for "Nyoka," proves to be adorable in her city-slicker role. She was not only lovely, with an expressive face, but she showed herself perfect as a poor little rich girl, who is pressured by her family and their wealth, and always urged to do the right thing -- which is what other people tell her, not what she decides.
There is an excellent cast, including Smith Ballew in a role of the type I've never seen him in before, and he too showed a side of himself that should have had casting directors lining up. Well, he did OK as a recording artist, so maybe that was enough for him. But, to me, he should have been in more movies.
Walter Catlett, Vivian Oakland, Guinn Williams and so many others helped make this PRC production one of the best ever to come from that studio, and absolutely worthy of any studio.
There is one other performer needing special attention: Nancy June Robinson played the precocious little sister, and she was a stand-out! I have seen very few actors her age who were so natural, so expressive, so controlled, yet she made only two movies, according to IMDb. What a shame!
Christy Cabanne, that veteran, was both director and one of the writers, and he deserves mountains of praise for both roles. The other writer, Robert Lee Johnson, and Cabanne produced a charming and often downright funny script, well performed at every level by some of the best character actors in Hollywood.
Frankly, this is not what I would expect from PRC, and perhaps shame on me, for it is thoroughgoing entertainment, produced near the end of World War II, showing some of the costs of that war, and presenting a lot of very likable people we'd enjoy knowing even better.
There is a print at YouTube with a few glitches (and those obnoxious YouTube commercials!) but "The Man Who Walked Alone" is such a joy, a real treasure, you probably won't notice anything but the movie itself.
