To me, Hoot Gibson always looked like he had a face more for comedy than Westerns, and I wonder how his career might have gone in that direction. As for "Clearing The Range", Gibson gets to wear a couple of different faces, that of a sheepish drifter on the one hand, and the charismatic and romantic 'El Capitan', an alter ego he uses to good advantage to smoke out the outlaw who killed his brother.
I got a kick out of the way Lafe Kildare rose from the position of cashier at the Comanche State Bank to it's President after he knocked off Jim Fremont. Talk about a fast track up the corporate ladder! Hey, how about that big kiss Curt Fremont (Gibson) gives Mary Lou (Sally Eilers) under cover of darkness and her thinking it was El Capitan - almost a half century before Luke Skywalker would do the same just before swinging into action. I don't know why I thought of that, but it seems an apt comparison. It would have been cool if the character had a sword to rival Luke's light saber.
Never underestimate what the hero can do in pictures like these. How about Gibson's character making the save near the end of the picture by lassoing Kildare as he was just about to fall off the cliff! That was almost as good as Tim McCoy roping a gun out of the hand of an outlaw on horseback in "Forbidden Trails". None of the logistics or timing actually work to make those outcomes happen, but at least they're fun to watch.
Although it looked to me like Curt and Mary Lou made for a poor match up romantically, I was surprised to learn that Gibson and Sally Eilers were actually married at the time they made this picture together. Much younger than Gibson by about sixteen years, they didn't have to act to close out the picture in another big smooch.
I got a kick out of the way Lafe Kildare rose from the position of cashier at the Comanche State Bank to it's President after he knocked off Jim Fremont. Talk about a fast track up the corporate ladder! Hey, how about that big kiss Curt Fremont (Gibson) gives Mary Lou (Sally Eilers) under cover of darkness and her thinking it was El Capitan - almost a half century before Luke Skywalker would do the same just before swinging into action. I don't know why I thought of that, but it seems an apt comparison. It would have been cool if the character had a sword to rival Luke's light saber.
Never underestimate what the hero can do in pictures like these. How about Gibson's character making the save near the end of the picture by lassoing Kildare as he was just about to fall off the cliff! That was almost as good as Tim McCoy roping a gun out of the hand of an outlaw on horseback in "Forbidden Trails". None of the logistics or timing actually work to make those outcomes happen, but at least they're fun to watch.
Although it looked to me like Curt and Mary Lou made for a poor match up romantically, I was surprised to learn that Gibson and Sally Eilers were actually married at the time they made this picture together. Much younger than Gibson by about sixteen years, they didn't have to act to close out the picture in another big smooch.