Singing Guns: An Underrated and Underseen Gem by Michaela Owens
When I first saw Singing Guns (1950) earlier this year, I wasn’t expecting much. Directed by R.G. Springsteen, a filmmaker I’d never heard of, and starring Vaughn Monroe, a big band singer and bandleader, the film seemed to be a hokey example of the Western’s “singing cowboy” subgenre, a subgenre I must confess makes me cringe. However, I felt compelled to give Singing Guns a try when I realized that August 6 was the centenary of its leading lady, Ella Raines, an enormously underappreciated actress who might be best known for her stellar work in the brilliant film noir Phantom Lady or Preston Sturges’s screwball classic Hail the Conquering Hero (both 1944).
Unsurprisingly, Raines was superb as Singing Guns’s steely, bewitching saloon owner; what was surprising, though, was just how good the film turned out to be. Engaging with such themes as morality and redemption, the story is about Rhiannon (Monroe), an elusive outlaw with a famed stash of hidden gold. After he gets into a shootout with Sheriff Jim Caradac (Ward Bond – who else?), he quickly regrets wounding the lawman and takes him to the local doctor (Walter Brennan, naturally), who forces Rhiannon into giving the sheriff a life-saving blood transfusion. When the fugitive wakes up the next day, he discovers that Dr. Mark, or “Doc,” has shaved his beard, given him new clothes, and gotten him a job as the interim sheriff while Caradac recovers.
Seeing a chance to get his hands on a large sum of gold that will be leaving the town in a few weeks, Rhiannon goes along with this convenient new identity, unaware that Doc, who is also a preacher, knows who he really is and hopes to reform him. As the film goes on, Caradac learns the truth and strikes a deal with Doc: if Doc can’t change Rhiannon’s ways before the day of the gold shipment, Caradac will arrest the outlaw. Caradac’s girlfriend, Nan (Raines), however, isn’t interested in saving Rhiannon’s soul or getting justice for his thievery – instead, she decides to seduce him into revealing where he has hidden his gold.
When I think of the singing cowboy figure, he is optimistic, dashing, benevolent, heroic. Vaughn Monroe is… not quite that. Brooding and short-tempered, he makes you believe that this is one singing cowboy who isn’t afraid to shoot if you get in his way. Admittedly, Monroe isn’t the most virtuosic actor to watch, a fact that is especially apparent given his talented co-stars. There is a slight monotony to his line delivery and a blankness in his eyes that bring to mind the word “wooden,” and yet somehow it all works here. When he launches into his deep baritone and stares down an antagonizing character to provoke him, it should be ridiculous – you probably chuckled just reading that description – but Monroe’s intensity sells it. A radio and singing star who wasn’t interested in adding “movie star” to his résumé, Singing Guns, another Western titled Toughest Man in Arizona (1952), and an episode of Bonanza became Monroe’s only real acting credits.
One of the film’s biggest accomplishments is that it presents Monroe’s three songs more organically than expected. While his first number, a tune co-written by the man himself called “Singing My Way Back Home,” is a sign of defiance against the town bully, his second, “Mule Train,” is a way to pass the time and entertain one of his new friends as they drive a stagecoach. (“Mule Train,” by the way, was nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar that year and was a huge hit.) Another song Monroe penned, “Mexicali Trail,” is the last, and maybe the best, number. Sitting in Nan’s darkened, empty saloon, Rhiannon is crooning this ballad to himself when Nan appears, wearing a slinky, gray silk dress with a high slit. With a glint in her eye, she seats herself in a backlit chair and crosses her legs, revealing her black stockings and projecting her alluring shadow on the wall that is in front of Rhiannon.
While Singing Guns is nice to listen to, it’s even better to look at. Bathed in gorgeous shades of orange, blue, and brown, Reggie Lanning’s use of Trucolor dovetails wonderfully with Western aesthetics and makes a showcase of Ella Raines’s dazzling costumes, which it is easy to assume took up most of the wardrobe budget:
Throughout Singing Guns, Raines is the source of the film’s most arresting images. There are often scenes where she seems to appear out of nowhere as if she were some kind of figment of the predominantly male townspeople’s collective imagination. Raines and her character are much more than pretty faces, though. Rhiannon may be the focus of the film, but Nan is just as, if not more, fascinating a character as he is. Clever, ambitious, and self-sufficient, Nan is nobody’s fool and it is delicious to witness.
The best part about any Ella Raines performance is how she would use her remarkable blue eyes. With the flip of a switch, she could convey unapologetic lust, unbearable sadness, scathing anger, deep love… Eyes are actually an important aspect of Singing Guns and Nan. She tells Rhiannon that she always studies a person’s eyes to determine their character, a habit she developed from years of playing poker. We later see this in action when she is playing against the arrogant and dangerous Richards. In a wordless shot/reverse shot, Nan sizes Richards up as he smirks. Suddenly, a slight smile comes to her face and Richards, unable to withstand Nan’s intense gaze, must look away. In just fifteen electrifying seconds, she knows to call his bluff, thus winning the game. This kind of scrutinization is also what allows Nan to figure out Rhiannon’s real identity after she sees him wearing a bandanna over his face when he robs her stagecoach in the first scene and later when he again wears a bandanna to help save men from a burning mine while sheriff.
Even though you probably have never heard of Singing Guns before – I know I didn’t until this year – it is a fun, suspenseful, absorbing Western that meditates on the morality and loneliness of the outlaw figure. Ward Bond and Walter Brennan are more than enough to warrant a viewing, but the catchy songs, entrancing Trucolor, and Ella Raines’s luminous work make the film exactly the kind of underrated and underseen gem I love to discover. Singing Guns is available on DVD. You can also currently see the same beautiful print of it in full on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdjB_n2JgU
Riding The Dusty Trail 