From circa 2003:

Brigham’s Cultural Corner - Noir Rogers

I’ve recently been on a Roy Rogers Westerns kick, having bought a two DVD set of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers movies set for only $6. I have always thought the interesting thing about those old Republic Westerns is the apparently indeterminate era the stories are scripted for; they seem to have one foot in the Old West and the other foot in the modern era. Men dress in a fashion that’s more or less like the late 19th C. and ride horses, wear revolvers, etc. but wait! Dale Evans just pulled up to the ranch in a 1941 Ford! It makes me wonder what the West was really like sixty years ago.

It has become apparent to me that these Roy Rogers films are the very opposite of the films noir I’m always going on about in these e-mails. There is no moral ambiguity whatsoever with the protagonist – Roy is a straight-shootin’ good guy, no doubt about it. The Sons of the Pioneers are always bursting forth into song. What’s more, there’s always a sidekick – Smiley Burnette, Andy Devine or Gabby Hayes – to keep things light-hearted, and finally, the good guy always wins at the end.

However, such was the influence of the film noir movement in the postwar era that some of it even managed to creep into a Roy Rogers film, 1948’s “Under California Stars.” While Andy Devine and the Sons of the Pioneers keep things light-hearted, this film is considerably darker than Rogers’ usual work. Trigger is kidnapped, and, alarmingly, a crippled boy who knows about the plot is slapped around and threatened to have his head blown off if he talks. A dog and a horse are shown bludgeoned. A bad guy, shown half in shadows in the noir style, attempts to double-cross the conspirators and is shot and killed in the living room of Roy’s ranch. Finally, there is an additional double-cross and two violent gun deaths at the end - all classic noir devices.

Film noir is really more of a sensibility or a style than a specific genre; it is possible to have a film noir Western. (One such is Robert Mitchum’s 1947 film “Pursued.”) I just wasn’t expecting noir elements in a Roy Rogers film!

The other interesting thing about these old Westerns is the Republic Trucolor process, which attempted to reproduce a palette of colors using film dyes of two colors: red-orange and blue-green. Consequently, the sky is always turquoise and everyone’s clothing seems to be a variation of orange and blue-green - very southwestern and Santa Fe, if you know what I mean. An interesting description of Cinecolor is here. (It’s similar to Trucolor.)