What makes it different from others?

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This film was later remade as "Pardners" with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. While I'm an avid Martin fan, I'm no fan of Jerry Lewis, and I very much like Bing Crosby and like Martha Raye. My suggestion is to watch "Pardners" instead; it doesn't drag as this film seems to. And, while aspects of both films are different, there are other parts that are surprisingly similar.The problem with this film is that, as much as I like Crosby in both musicals and dramas, I have a difficult time imagining him as a bronco riding steer wrestler. It just doesn't work.What does work are the songs, particularly an outstanding rendition of "Empty Saddles" (its debut). In terms of plot...pretty light.Aside from not being very believable as a rough and tumble cowboy, Crosby is still his pleasant self on screen, and this film was right at the beginning of what I think were Bing's best early years on film.I was not impressed with Frances Farmer here as the love interest. I know she had an "interesting" and tragic life, but I have yet to be impressed with any of her film roles.Bob Burns is sort of humorous as the side kick, as is Martha Raye as the Easterner who goes after the hick Westerner. Samuel S. Hinds, a great character actor is along for a few scenes, and Lucile Gleason in a rather truncated role that just seems to hang out there with little real connection to the rest of the film.Even as somewhat of a Crosby fan, this film had trouble holding my attention. It's not bad, nor great.

The movie keeps shifting plots every 15 minutes. It seems probable that lots of material was cut out, as very little makes much sense.However, the movie contains so many delightful elements that one hardly cares. Bing Crosby is quite pleasant. He is wonderfully laid back and relaxed, just saying his lines between songs. This allows us to focus mainly on Francis Farmer, who is captivatingly beautiful as a runaway heiress-bride. Bob Burns with an instrument he invented called "the Bazooka" and Leonid Kinskey as the Russian immigrant cowboy "Mischa" provide a few laughs. Cuddles the Bull is also a surprisingly effective animal co-star.This is 20 year old Martha Raye's screen debut and it is quite unusual. She is doing vaudeville without toning it down one iota for the screen. This makes a sharp contrast to Crosby and Farmer's gentle reserved acting styles. She is frenetic, shouting and jumping all other the sets. There is something disturbing about her man-hungry character, Emma. It is a sex-role reversal with the woman as the obsessed predator who can't control herself and offers herself to any stray man. With so many other out-of-synch elements in the film, she just fits right in.It is a little ironic that Raye would get top billing two years later in "Give Me A Sailor" which was Bob Hope's first real starring film. So Raye worked with both Crosby and Hope before they worked together on the road pictures.For about 15 minutes towards the end of the film, there's a nice jamboree which includes the introduction of the classic Johnny Mercer song "I'm an Old Cow Hand". The three or four plot lines are kept in limbo while this is going on. If we had cared about the plot lines, we would have been upset, but since they are so light and flimsy anyway, we can see them as just excuses for this nice vaudeville segment.It is a shame that the duet between Farmer and Crosby was cut. I hope someone finds it somewhere and releases it on Youtube.Ultimately, this is an amusing and reasonably clever concoction of fluff and music. It is too slow-paced for today's ADD generation, but for lovers of Old Hollywood, it is fine.

Another source of recording material for Bing Crosby were western songs. He recorded a good many of them in his career. About the time Rhythm on the Range was being made the singing cowboy was just getting started as a movie staple. When Bing's 78s were being compiled into vinyl albums in the 1950s he had recorded enough for several albums. Lots of the songs of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers are in the Crosby catalog in fact a young Roy Rogers can be spotted in the I'm An Old Cowhand number.Runaway heiresses were another movie staple especially in the 1930s and that's Frances Farmer's part. She's running away from a marriage she's not terribly thrilled about and stowing away on a freight boxcar she finds Bing Crosby who unbeknownst to her works as a ranchhand on her aunt's Frying Pan Ranch out in Arizona. Bing is nursemaiding a bull named Cuddles and Bing, Frances and Cuddles make their way west with several adventures. Trailing them are a trio of hoboes played very well by James Burke, Warren Hymer, and George E. Stone who have found out who Frances is and are looking to make a quick buck. Their machinations go for naught of course.In Frances Farmer's book, Will There Ever Be A Morning, she describes a not very happy life in Hollywood. However she liked this film, as it had no pretensions and similarly her leading man. She described Bing Crosby as a pleasant unassuming fellow who she liked, but didn't get to know real well. Frances had a best friend, a matron of honor to be, for the wedding that didn't come off. She was played by Martha Sleeper and I think a lot of her part was edited out. Sleeper gave some hints of a really juicy Eve Arden type character that could have been used more.The second leads were played by Bob Burns and Martha Raye. Burns, the Arkansas Traveler and regular on Crosby's Kraft Music Hall, played his usual rustic type and in this film introduced his patented musical instrument, the bazooka. Made out of two gas pipes and a funnel, the bazooka was a kind of countrified bassoon. The army's anti-tank device in World War II looked something like it and it was named as such.Martha Raye made her debut in this film and would go on to do two other films with Crosby. She sings her famous Mr. Paganini number here and her bumptious character complement Burns quite nicely.Crosby sings A Cowboy's Lullaby to Cuddles trying to calm him down during the train ride and the famous Empty Saddles during a scene at the Madison Square Garden Rodeo. He gets a ballad entitled I Can't Escape From You to sing while on the road with Farmer. But the most famous song to come out of this film is I'm An Old Cowhand which was a big seller for him. It's an ensemble number with just about everyone in the cast participating including as I said before, Roy Rogers and also a young Louis Prima. Now there's an interesting combination. I'm An Old Cowhand was written with words and music by Crosby's good friend and sometime singing partner Johnny Mercer.IT's a good film and I'm surprised Paramount didn't come up with any more Western type material for Bing considering he did a lot of recording of that material. The only other western type ballads he ever sung on the screen were The Funny Old Hills from Paris Honeymoon and When The Moon Comes Over Madison Square from Rhythm on the River. Crosby would have to wait until he essayed Thomas Mitchell's part in the remake of Stagecoach during the 1960s to be in another western. And there he sang no songs at all.One song that was cut out from the film was a duet by Crosby and Farmer called The House Jack Built for Jill. Crosby did record it for Decca as a solo and it is heard towards the end of the film in background. I was lucky to get a bootleg recording from the cut soundtrack. Frances talk/sings a la Rex Harrison and Bing sings it in his inimitable style. I think this was supposed to be a finale and it was cut at the last minute. The film does end somewhat abruptly and you can tell there was more shot. Maybe one day it will be restored.Rhythm on the Range was remade by Paramount with Martin and Lewis as Pardners. Dean and Jerry are good, but it ain't a patch to the original.

RHYTHM ON THE RANGE (Paramount, 1936), directed by Norman Taurog, stars none other than Bing Crosby in a change of pace where he saddles up in western attire playing a singing cowboy, or by profession, a cattleman. In spite of his starring status, the scenario actually focuses more on Frances Farmer in her third feature film performance and rising to star prominence.Those familiar with the Academy Award winning Frank Capra directorial 1934 comedy of IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, (runaway heiress meeting ordinary guy on a bus from Miami to New York), or others like it, will take notice in some similarities here (runaway heiress meeting ordinary guy on freight train from New York to Arizona), with of course, some revisions: Doris (Frances Farmer), a Park Avenue heiress, daughter to Robert Holloway (Samuel S. Hinds), the richest banker of New York, is making arrangements for her upcoming wedding to the wealthy Wall Street financial vice president and polo player named John Ashley Dolby III (a character never seen, except through a still photograph). Penelopie Ryland, "a true pioneer woman" (Lucille Webster-Gleason), her visiting aunt from Green Pastures, Arizona, realizes immediately that her niece is not marrying for love and tells her so. Later that night, Penelopie, who is sponsoring a rodeo contest at Madison Square Garden, makes an accusation to the crowd that embarrasses Doris enough to leave the stadium before things get underway. At the rodeo, Jeff Larrabee (Bing Crosby), assisted by his sidekick, Buck Eaton (Bob Burns), participates himself in every event in order to win the grand prize, the 2,000 pound champion bull named Cuddles. Following the event, Jeff arrives at his box car with Cuddles on time, while Buck and their boss, Penelopie, miss the train. As for Jeff, he find he's not traveling entirely alone when he notices Doris (under the guise of Lois Hall), which turns to a series of arguments between them. As for Buck, he encounters the daffy Emma Madison (Martha Raye), a Macy's shop girl taking a vacation to visit her brother.On the musical program, songs include: "Empty Saddles" (by Billy Hill and J. Kiern Brennan); "Sundown" (by Walter Bullock and Richard Whiting); "I Can't Escape From You" (by Leo Robin and Richard Whiting/ all sung by Bing Crosby); "Mr. Pagagini" (by Sam Coslow/ sung by Martha Raye); "Drink It Down" (by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger/ sung by Leonid Kinskey and cowboys); and "I'm an Old Cowhand From the Rio Grande" (by Johnny Mercer/ sung by The Sons of the Pioneers, Bing Crosby, Bob Burns, and cast). While "I'm an Old Cowhand" is the most memorable song in this production, "Empty Saddles" and "I Can't Escape From You" are also as good as it gets. On a slower tempo is "Sundown," which Crosby sings to the bull to calm down and go to sleep on the freight train. So soothing is his vocalizing that he even succeeds in giving Frances Farmer her lullaby of rest as she lays up in a pile of hay for the night.Making her movie debut in RHYTHM ON THE RANGE is Martha Raye. Arriving a bit late into the story, her familiar mannerisms and screwball antics help give the movie some uplifting moments. In spite the fact that Raye's style of comedy may or may not influence the younger generation of it's interesting to point out that in her day, the lady with the wide Joe E. Brown-type mouth was hailed as one of the funnier of the slapstick comediennes. Aside from a drunken scene where she sings a portion of "Love in Bloom" (a little inside humor since this popular song was initially introduced by Bing Crosby in the college musical, SHE LOVES ME NOT, in 1934) to Samuel S. Hinds, Raye even sings her signature number of "Mr. Pagagini" while sober. Bob Burns, the slow-witted philosopher who enjoys himself by playing his own musical instrument called the "bazooka," makes good comic foil to Raye, and would work together again in other feature comedies. Others in the supporting cast include: Martha Sleeper, George E. Stone, James Burke, Warren Hymer and Clem Bevans.As much as the runaway heiress theme has become common place in many 1930s comedies, RHYTHM ON THE RANGE comes across quite well with its predictability. Crosby is no stranger in encountering troublesome heiresses on screen. With Frances Farmer (1914-1970) being one of the most attractive of his co-stars, he did come across the spitfire of Carole Lombard in WE'RE NOT DRESSING (1934). Even some of the dialogue "I've never been so serious in all my life," used here is echoed from WE'RE NOT DRESSING. There is even some fine western scenery during its second half making one wish the film were produced in Technicolor. Overall, RHYTHM ON THE RANGE makes satisfying viewing during its 87 minutes of screen nonsense.Out of circulation from the commercial late night television markets for since the early 1980s, RHYTHM ON THE RANGE will never cease to be out of view due to its current availability on either home video (distributed in 1995, preceded by a theatrical trailer) or DVD (double featured with Crosby's 1940 release of RHYTHM ON THE RIVER) or broadcast of Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: August 3, 2016) and the Encore Western Channel. In conclusion, Look fast for a young Roy Rogers, future star in Republic Studios "B" westerns of the 1940s and 50s, appearing briefly in the "I'm an Old Cowhand" festivity sequence. (***).