A Holy Terror (1931)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

Irving Cummings

Writers:

Ralph Block (adaptation)
Max Brand (novel)

Release Date:

19 July 1931 (USA)

Genre:

Western

Plot:

Eastern millionaire's son Bard finds his father murdered and flies west to see rancher Drew who may know something about it...

Plot Keywords:

Based On Novel

Cast

George O'Brien	...	Tony Bard aka Woodbury
Sally Eilers	...	Jerry Foster
Rita La Roy	...	Kitty Carroll
Humphrey Bogart	...	Steve Nash
James Kirkwood	...	William Drew
Stanley Fields	...	Butch Morgan
Robert Warwick	...	John Bard aka Thomas Woodbury
Richard Tucker	...	Tom Hedges
Earl Pingree	...	Jim Lawler, Ranch Manager

Runtime:

53 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Fox Film Corporation

Soundtrack:

(I'M A DREAMER) AREN'T WE ALL?

Getting Some Answers

Humphrey Bogart made his western debut in this film A Holy Terror based on the Max Brand novel Trailin'. It had been filmed ten years earlier as a silent under its original name with Tom Mix in the lead. Western star George O'Brien is in the lead with Bogey as one of the villains.

Interestingly enough this might have been Bogart's best outing in a western. He was a villain later in Warner Brothers big budget westerns The Oklahoma Kid where he's too much of an eastern gangster and Virginia City where he sounds laughable as a Mexican bandit. Here he's just right as the foreman of a western ranch who gets a case of the green eyed monster when easterner George O'Brien starts eying Sally Eilers.

But that's just a sidebar to the main story. O'Brien is a polo playing easterner whose dad, Robert Warwick, is found shot to death. Searching his papers O'Brien finds that Warwick's original name was changed and that he had kept tabs on the whereabouts of a certain Wyoming rancher for years.

O'Brien goes to Wyoming to investigate and by the end of the film all his questions are answered. He might be an eastern dude, but his polo training makes him ride with the best of the cowboys as they learn to their regret. In fact O'Brien whose big break came in the John Ford silent western classic, The Iron Horse, got his start in the army horse cavalry before World War I.

As for Bogart he's the foreman who gets his boss's intentions all wrong as far as O'Brien is concerned. He's not bad in the part though and is noticed, especially by his legion of fans for whom he's an existential legend.