User Reviews

Enjoyed this old time Western from 1934 with John Wayne, (John Carruthers) who sneaks into a hotel during a very bad thunder and lightning storm. The Sheriff, Jake Withers, (Gabby Hayes) gets a room and keeps his eye on a large sum of money deposited in the hotel safe. There is a man named Malgrove, (Edward Peil,Sr.) who owns the town and is a crook and he is trying to tell the town folk about selling their homes, because he knows that a gold mine is under all their homes and he wants to cash in on all the benefits. Betty Mason, (Eleanor Hunt) adds some female charm to the film and John Carruthers falls madly in love with her big brown eyes. If you like classic western films, this is the film for you, the film locations are outstanding for 1934. Enjoy.

This western was the second significant film in the development of George "Gabby" Hayes' cantankerous character who emerged as the old whiskered comedy sidekick in the Hopalong Cassidy films. Gabby plays it straight here as a sheriff who even shoots a baddie. The only "funny" things about him are the hole filled hat he wears, his big walrus mustache, & his typical slurred speech. The acting is good all around, except for Eleanor Hunt, who has that cute Clara Bow look, but she's brought that old silent film style to this movie. I love the old B westerns, & aside from my favorite, Hopalong Cassidy, to me the early John Wayne series is the next best. This is not one of Wayne's best, but it's a must-see for Gabby Hayes fans. I rate it 6/10.

Blue Steel finds sheriff Gabby Hayes on the trail of a bandit known as the Polka Dot Bandit by his distinctive polka dot neckerchief. After a robbery at a local hotel, Hayes has reason to suspect a tall stranger played by John Wayne as the bandit.

But before he can act on his suspicions both of them get themselves involved in foiling a scheme by a group of outlaws who are starving out a town and they're an especially murderous bunch, attacking supply trains and killing everyone on the trains.

It's not too hard to figure out who's behind all this dirty work, especially when you hear one of the town's leading citizens make a 'sacrificial' offer for everyone's land. Wayne and Hayes come to the same conclusion as the audience does and spend the rest of the film foiling the dastardly scheme.

Blue Steel has lots of action in it, the action covers up some of the holes in the storyline. The villain also has designs on the daughter of another town leading citizen and Eleanor Hunt plays the daughter in the best Little Nell manner of all those Victorian morality plays.

Still John Wayne and Gabby Hayes work well together and it's not the best or the worst of Wayne's Lone Star films.

Almost all the Lone Star John Wayne movies have one or two quite unusual and memorable scenes. Here, it is the bizarre opening scene and the beautiful last shot. The opening is actually quite a mess. It takes place in a hotel room on a rainy night and it is hard to tell what is going on for most of the scene. There is also the only risqué double-entendre that I've seen in a Lone Star film when a newlywed husband comes back downstairs from his bridal suite and announces "I can't find it." The ending shot is Wayne riding off into the mountains with his girl and it is just lovely.

The confusing and messy hotel sequence in the beginning is atoned for at the end with one of the best final chase sequences in the series. As mentions by other users, the stunt work is excellent and the scene of Wayne picking her his fallen lady from the ground while riding a team of galloping horses is still sweet, if not quite breath-taking.

As the ten minute final chase scene is a big element in all the Lone Star Westerns, I would have to rate this highly, although the other 40 minutes does drag a bit.

Edward Peil Sr. plays a great villain as he did in "Man from Utah". He was in some 375 films in his 40 year career.

Yakima Canutt, as usual, is effective as a bad guy too. With a little luck, he would have been as big a star as Wayne.

Not the best Lone Star, but it is effective.

"Blue Steel" is one of a series of "B" westerns made by John Wayne in the 1933-35 period. As with most entries in the series, these Lone Star productions had a stock company all their own.

Robert N. Bradbury (father of Bob Steele) directed most of them. The supporting cast usually consisted of George "Gabby" Hayes, Earl Dwire and Yakima Canutt playing various roles. A definite asset to the series was Canutt who doubled Wayne and perfected many of his legendary stunts in these films. Unfortunately, he also "acted" in many of them.

This one starts out amid a driving rain storm. John Carruthers (Wayne) seeks shelter by sneaking into a hotel run by a sleeping Hank (George Cleveland). Also seeking shelter is Sheriff Jake (Hayes) who is after The Polka Dot Bandit. As luck would have it, the bandit (Canutt) robs the safe while everyone is sleeping and Jake sees Carruthers going through the safe after the bandit escaped and thus blames him for the robbery.

Jake trails Carruthers to a cabin and is about to arrest him when they hear shots. Now it seems town boss Malgrove (Edward Piel) and his gang are preventing supplies and ammunition from reaching town. Betty Mason (Elinor Hunt) and her father (Lafe Mckee) are attempting to bring in the latest shipment when they are ambushed and the father is killed. Carruthers and Jake rescue Betty and bring her to town where it seems Malgrove has taken a special interest in her.

Well, needless to say, Carruthers sorts things all out by the final fade out and everyone except the bad guys, lives happily ever after.

Wayne was still honing his skills at this time and it shows at times, but he was getting better with each picture. Hayes played a number of roles in this series from villain to father of the heroine to sidekick to lawman. He had not yet arrived at his "Gabby" character although Sheriff Jake was pretty close. Earl Dwire has a minor role as one of Piel's henchmen.

I bought a colorized version of this film that had been renamed "Stolen Goods" upon it's DVD release. And I have to say it was one of the better versions I have seen for a 1934 filmed movie. The scenery was wonderful and there was never a dark moment like you get in so many early black and white films. And the ending that made 'riding off in the sunset' come alive. John Wayne and Gabby Hayes, more or less, team up to stop a bunch of villains that is stealing all the transporting of goods making the good people thinking about leaving the town. And when one of the richer man in town says he'll buy the townsfolk land if they wanted to leave- makes you know something may be afoot. This was not that bad of an early "B" western. Plenty of shooting and plenty of riding. Would make for a great afternoon at the theater. With the film being only about 55 minutes long, there is enough action to keep a viewer alert to the very end as two ride into the sunset.

A fairly involving 'Lone Star' film (even though it lacks enough dialog to provide any character) because of: 1) The opening sequence, with great silences, where we are caught up in John Wayne's mysterious and sudden presence in a hotel during a rain storm,

2) the registering 'bride' and 'bridegroom' at the hotel, shy and secretly excited; later the bridegroom, George Nash in his last film, comes back from the bridal suite saying 'I can't find it.'

3) Yakima Canutt's amazing stunt work-- pulling up a fallen Eleanor Hunt thru the coach horse team, and then helping her onto John Wayne's horse,

4) the extensive final chase sequence, excitingly paced and edited as the bad guys (at least 9 of them) chase our heroes across the vast prairies -- whew!

This time, without any preamble of romantic intentions anywhere else in the film, John Wayne and the girl do ride off into the sunset holding hands!

The only reason why I stuck this one out was the film's mercifully short run-time. The movie starts with a generally confusing and slow-paced sequence inside an old west tavern, and the movie never really acquires any pace. For the first fifteen minutes, several bewildering cut-aways to John Wayne plague the "action," yet give the audience no idea as to John Wayne is playing, if he is a "good guy," how the other characters know him, or if the other characters even know he is there. This would be a great technique if the director gave you the impression he was TRYING to confuse you. Instead, one immediately gets the impression that the film is amateurish, even for a b-movie. This should not suggest that the movie is unentertaining. I found the awkward pan shots and poorly-shot stunts to be thigh-slappingly hilarious, particularly the scenes in which characters fall off desert cliffs and land in deep-wooded rivers. Oh yeah, and a lot of the characters look the same and whenever one gets shot, well, head-scratching ensues. I'm sorry if you've had to see this.

The 5th of John Wayne's 14 Lone Star Westerns is nothing if not a lively piece. True, it gets off to a remarkably slow start, but once the bandits arrive on the scene the pace picks up no end. Although the heroine is somewhat lacking in thespian talent, she's pretty enough and has little to do or say anyway. It's Wayne and Hayes who set the action rolling and keep it up—interspersed with some spectacular Canutt stunt-work—right to the finish line. And it's good to see Yakima Canutt in a sizable role on camera as well as doubling Wayne in the action spots.

Director Robert North Bradbury has a grand time once the action switches to the wide open spaces. You can virtually see him riding the camera car as it swoops along with galloping-hell-for-leather riders in super-fast tracking shots. And I love those whip pans!

Photographer Archie Stout, a specialist in location work, is also most at home with awesome vistas of wide open plains, ringed by rugged mountains and fleecy clouds in the Alabama Hills, Ca.

If you like John Wayne as I do then he must watch blue steel also known as stolen goods on tubi. Its a short but effective film 8n the early days of John Wayne

This "Blue Steel" has no connection with the Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle from the late eighties. This one is one of the many Western B-movies which John Wayne made during the mid-thirties. The title, in fact, seems fairly meaningless, and the film is also sometimes referred to as "An Innocent Man", a title which makes more sense in the context of the plot. In most of his Westerns made in this period, Wayne plays characters with the Christian name John, probably a deliberate attempt by the studio to create a distinctive identity for him. Here he plays John Carruthers, an undercover US Marshal who is in a small Western town investigating a string of robberies committed by the "Polka Dot Bandit", so called from the distinctive neckerchief he wears.

While in town, however, Carruthers uncovers a completely different crime. A leading local citizen named Malgrove has discovered that, unknown to anyone else in town, there is a rich vein of gold underneath the area. Malgrove and a gang of bandits have therefore formed a plan to force the local people out of town so that he can purchase their land for a pittance and claim the gold for himself. The bandits have cut off all food supplies, leaving the townspeople with the choice of either fleeing or starving to death. (It is never explained why the town was established in a remote desert location with no local farms or other means of feeding itself). It falls to Carruthers to try and thwart this dastardly plot with the help of the local sheriff. The sheriff, who is unaware that Carruthers is a US Marshal, wrongly believes him to be the Polka Dot Bandit, but (again for unexplained reasons) fails to arrest him.

"Blue Steel" is typical of many of the Westerns made by "Poverty Row" studios during the thirties, and shares many of their flaws- a confusing or irrational plot, some dodgy acting and some badly done action sequences, especially the fist fights. (Most of them seemed to feature at least one punch-up between the hero and his antagonists- perhaps the censors would not have been happy with too much gunplay, which was the more common way of settling disputes in the Old West). It lacks the striking landscape photography which distinguishes another Wayne Western from 1934, "The Trail Beyond". Some of the stunts are well performed- the cast includes the famous stunt man Yakima Canutt, a close friend of Wayne- and there are occasional moments of excitement, but this is really one of those films that is only remembered today because its leading man went on to become a Hollywood icon. 4/10

What a wacky opening scene. The thunderstorm's got to be the loudest on record-- and why is Wayne sneaking into the hotel lobby. I guess he doesn't want to pay for a room. Then there are the newly-weds right out of the aw' shucks school of acting. And most curiously of all-- how did they get the groom's"I couldn't find it" snippet past the public watchdogs. This amounts to an astonishing innuendo, and no doubt one for the boys-- in the movie, that is. Probably there are more than a few audience 10-year old's still puzzling over that one. In all likelihood, it was someone's private joke that made it to the screen on a bet.

Lone Star popped for some great location photography. The boys get to ride around the Alabama Hills with the scenic Southern Sierras in the background. The story doesn't make a lot of sense, but who cares, especially when the canyon explodes in a really great effect worthy of an A production. Also, some good crowd scenes of ordinary looking people. When they talk about getting forced off their homesteads, I expect more than a few folks in 1934 wished they had a Wayne on their side.

As others point out, this looks like an early stage in the evolution of Hayes' unforgettable "Gabby" character. He's not called that, still the crusty old coot is definitely coming out. How delightful the Gabby-Wayne pairing proved over the years, especially in their masterpiece Tall in the Saddle. Wayne always seems genuinely amused by the ornery Gabby. Watch some of his reactions here. Those broad grins are not acting.

Great final shot that still brings a tear to the eye.

This time John Wayne plays a U.S. Marshall and at the beginning of the film he sees a man standing behind a safe, so naturally he figures the man is trying to rob the safe,, so he goes to investigate,, and just as he is ready to arrest the man,, he find out it's the local sheriff, who happens to save his life in the very next instant, meanwhile the two become friends and they learn that the town's most prominent citizen is planning to take the town for all that it's worth by siphoning the town dry by cutting off all of it's supply wagons, the movie stars George "Gabby" Hayes,, and Yakima Canut. the usual suspects. but I enjoy watching them along with the Duke,, maybe not one of the Duke's stronger movies but all in all not bad either,, pretty decent , will have to watch again soon.

BLUE STEEL (1934), a Lone Star Presentation for Monogram Studios, stars John Wayne in his fifth poverty-row western for the studio. Supported by familiar stock players of George "Gabby" Hayes, Yakima Canutt, Lafe McKee and Earl Dwire, Wayne's female so-star is the relatively unknown Eleanor Hunt, best known, if ever, for her prime role assignment opposite Eddie Cantor in the screen adaptation to the hit stage musical, WHOOPEE (Samuel Goldwyn, 1930). Subsequent roles for Hunt failed to elevate her as a major attraction as would Wayne a decade later rising to star status and box-office attraction for decades to come. BLUE STEEL is also known for Wayne's frequent teaming opposite George Hayes, not yet credited as "Gabby," but the start of his bearded character that would make him famous.

The story begins with a thunderstorm opening as a cowboy (John Wayne) enters a hotel while its innkeeper, Hank (George Cleveland) is asleep by the desk. The cowboy, later identified as John Carruthers, hides under the hotel stairway while moments later, Sheriff Jake Withers (George Hayes) acquires a second floor room with a spy hole on the floor for him to watch the lobby for the arrival of notorious "Pokka Dot Bandit." After other guests as a middle-aged woman and a honeymooning couple enter the scene, things settle down as man comes in to place a cache with payroll of $4,000 placed into a hotel safe. Getting hold of the combination, Danti (Yakima Canutt) sneaks in the empty lobby and steals the money. A slight noise awakens John who sees the man running out. While investigating the safe, the sheriff pots him before he, too, runs off. Suspecting John to be the bandit, he locates him in a remote cabin. Rather than arresting him, the two men bond together in rescuing Betty Mason (Eleanor Hunt), whose father (Lafe McKee) has just been murdered by a couple of outlaws while bringing food and ammunition to Yucca City. Taking Mr. Malgrove (Ed Piel Sr.) into her confidence, it is learned that there is a gang leader intending to cripple the town in order to obtain a valuable gold mine nearby. As John becomes interested in Betty, he becomes very concerned about her sudden disappearance.

Lacking underscoring for mood and action purposes, BLUE STEEL gets by on its own merits, especially with the presence of John Wayne, early in his career. Aside from good background scenery and action-packed scenes, there's also some amusements involved. One in particular revolves around a nervous bridegroom (George Nash) registering for a bridal suite in the hotel with his equally shy bride, later coming to the front desk looking for something that is never explained. Viewers will get the idea through the expression of the groom's face. Mystery is also essential to learn the identity of the Polka-Dot Bandit and the gang leader of outlaws terrorizing the town. With production values lacking, and clocked at 54 minutes, the film wastes no time getting right to the basics before leading to a climatic finish.

As with other Lone Star Productions starring John Wayne from 1933 to 1935, BLUE STEEL was one of those long unseen westerns that surfaced in the 1980s either on public television or home video before distribution on DVD decades later. Other than cable broadcasts as American Movie Classics (1999-2003), beware of prints on western cable channels that are colorized or those with new but inappropriate underscoring during opening/closing credits and dramatic portions of the plot. Watching BLUE STEEL the way it was intended is the better way of seeing and enjoying vintage westerns such as this. (**1/2)

An American Western; A story about a sheriff who follows a man he believes to be a thief, only to find his suspect is on the trail of a bandit who is part of a larger plot to starve the townsfolk of a nearby city. With perfunctory direction and a predictable plot this film has little to offer in terms of artistry though there are some new techniques in flash-pan movement of character movement. John Wayne is suitably impressive as the lawman and George "Gabby" Hayes as the sheriff shines. The film offers spectacular scenery captured in the location shots at Big Pine, California, which help to elevate it above its ploddy pacing.

Mystery man John Wayne assists Sheriff George (pre-Gabby) Hayes in his search for polka-dot bandit Yakima Canutt and in the course of the investigation, uncovers a plot by a crooked mining company to steal land from innocent property owners.

Blue Steel is quite possibly the best film Wayne made during his tenure as a Lone Star/Monogram Pictures contract star, helped along by some great camera work, editing, and excellent use of locations, as well as some nice work by legendary stuntman Canutt. The special effect at the film's climax is also pretty good for a poverty row production.

In one scene, some metal power-lines are clearly visible atop a ridge!

Lastly, a colorized version blandly retitled Stolen Goods looks really neat and is worth checking out, that is if you're not an old fuddy-duddy!

Well, I've seen John Wayne's last movie ("The Shootist") and now in "Blue Steel" I've seen not his first by any means but one of his earlier movies and I've seen a few of his roles in between. I still can't figure it out. I can't deny that he was a mega-star, but he does absolutely nothing for me. Wayne aside, this movie didn't come across as a great vehicle for an actor anyway. It's rather dull (especially in its opening) and I have to admit that I never really did figure the details of the plot out, which is probably best explained by the fact that I kept nodding off throughout. In the beginning, Wayne's John Carruthers is mistaken by the local sheriff (Gabby Hayes) for a thief, but the two then form a partnership to stop the real bad guy of the movie from dishonestly forcing ranchers off their land and buying it up so that they can control a major gold mine.

Frankly, I found nothing particularly exciting here, except perhaps for the fact that it's mercifully short at less than an hour, and the ending (as Carruthers rides off with Betty to get married) came across as silly to me. It's worth watching, I suppose, only if you're a big fan of John Wayne and want to see an early role of his. 2/10