Frontier Pony Express

Roy Rogers is the best pony express rider in the third of his nine westerns released in 1939. The Civil War is on, and the service is the vital link to California and its gold mines. But the Confederates know this, so they send Don Dilaway to spy, along with his beautiful sister, Lynn Roberts, who knows nothing about it.

Roy sings a couple of songs, and Joseph Kane does his usual fine job of making this a good singing western. What makes this 58-minute B western so very good is the fast cutting pace. B westerns were the most conservative of the film genres (with the possible exception of trailers for coming movies), and the Poverty Row producers were still leisurely in dialogue and cutting speed. People would say something, and then the next speaker might think it over. Or we might be treated to a long-distance or trucking shot of someone riding a horse past undistinguished territory for half a minute. Not this movie!

The dialogue, although not much more than adequate, crackles, and editor Gene Milford wastes no time showing you people riding along. He'll show you a riding mounting and spurring his horse, and then cut to him at the end of his run. The action sequences race. During these sequences, there's no clip longer than two seconds before a cut or a pan away, and sometimes you have only a second to grasp what is going on..... which is just right.

Milford had already won an Academy Award for co-editing LOST HORIZON, and would win another for ON THE WATERFRONT. He would work, mostly as an editor, through the late 1970s, and die in 1991, aged 89.