Chip has inherited a supposedly worthless gold mine from her father and Craig Allen is about to buy it. Roy suspects the mine may be valuable and using a clue left by Chip's father, investigates. He finds the hidden shaft that contains the gold and with the posse chasing him on a trumped up robbery charge, races to town with ore samples hoping to get there before the ownership is transferred. Bad guy Craig Allen, gambler and town boss, tries to take a gold mine inherited by innocent Chip Williams on her seventeenth birthday. Roy and his pal 'Teddy' Bear ride to help the girl and her cousin. "Cowboy and the Senorita" is the very first screen pairing of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and it comes across surprisingly well. The film title is also the name of the opening and closing musical number, and even if not meant to be prophetic, the eventual marriage of Roy and Dale proved to be a wonderful union for film goers and fans of the Western duo.<br/><br/>The story involves a missing runaway Chip Williams (Mary Lee), who is revealed to be Ysobel Martinez' (Dale Evans) half sister. Chip needs to find out what her deceased father left her in a box buried in an abandoned mine on the Martinez property. The mine is soon to be sold to Ysobel's fiancé Craig Allen (John Hubbard), and that should give you an idea where the story is headed. Allen and his henchmen have already begun excavating the mine for it's hoard of gold, while busily setting about to frame Roy and his sidekick Teddy Bear (Guinn "Big Boy" Williams) for Chip's disappearance, and later for the theft of two thousand dollars from his personal office safe.<br/><br/>To be sure, there are manufactured elements that defy coincidence in the story; Chip discovers her father's missing treasure on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, the day on which her father specified it should be opened. In a letter accompanying the discovered box, it states that a bracelet she already owns (and lost, conveniently found by Roy and Teddy Bear) is her only inheritance, but she should examine it closely for the treasure to reveal itself. <br/><br/>Bad guy Craig Allen, Ysobel's fiancé furiously denies his complicity in any cover-up scheme. In an interesting response by Roy, the film's date is put into historical perspective - there's enough gold in the assayer's office to make Allen the biggest liar in 40 states!<br/><br/>Since most of Roy's films offer Gabby Hayes or Andy Devine as the comedic sidekick, it's a refreshing change of pace to see Guinn "Big Boy" Williams in that capacity here. The clumsy Williams spends a lot of his time falling down, but he also has a highlight line in the film; when Craig Allen's henchman Ferguson wavers in admitting their role in the mine cover-up, Big Boy offers to "take him to the memory room".<br/><br/>The film ends on a quite lavish musical number that starts out with dancers circling a huge sombrero. It's a fitting end to an engaging story, with Roy's arms clasped around not one, but two pretty senoritas - Dale Evans and Mary Lee. At least the villain is not wearing a mustache in this cliché ridden western musical. Roy Rogers is typically heroic as a singing cowboy who aids a 16 year old heir to a gold mine threatened with losing her father's bequest. Very mature looking Mary Lee is as close to 16 as Dale Evans as a Mexican ranch owner. John Hubbard is cast as the villainous land baron determined to add the property to his already huge bundle. Rogers and sidekick Guinn "Big Boy" Williams win the cynical teen instantly (probably because they let her eat the viddles she attempted to steal) and are all of a sudden everybody's (except Hubbard's) pals. <br/><br/>Some pleasant minor songs and a lot of action keep this moving at breakneck speed, and it does hold some minor entertainment value. But it's as fresh a plot as 20 year old Lee seemed as a husky voiced teenager. The musical highlight is the plot pointless but quaiby "Enchilada Man" with the leads and the Sons of the Pioneers. Of course, clean shaven Hubbard is surrounded by a bunch of stereotypical looking western bad guys. There are never any surprises which downgrades this to standard stuff, fortunately over as fast as Trigger can cross Texas.
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346 weeks ago