Rangers of Fortune (1940)

Around the time Rangers Of Fortune was made by Paramount hero trio westerns were a big deal with such folks as the Three Mesquiteers, the Rangebusters, the Roughriders all competing for those Saturday afternoon dimes. Not to mention the most famous of all Hopalong Cassidy which was being produced at the Paramount studios at the time this film came out. Somebody made a decision to do one for a slightly bigger budget with one of their top male stars in the lead.

Fred MacMurray who was most famously quoted as saying that he never felt comfortable in westerns because 'the horse and I were never one' stars with Gilbert Roland and Albert Dekker as a trio not much for law and order and freshly fleeing from some Mexican Rurales over the border, become three gallant knights ridding a Texas border town of some outlaws terrorizing new settlers. No one knows who is doing this or why.

MacMurray and Roland are their usual selves. Dekker was quite a revelation in a part that first call would have gone to Warren Hymer. Patricia Morison who recently turned a 100 years young has all the men in town trying to win her except Albert Dekker. Dick Foran is over from Warner Brothers as an eager young settler. Joseph Schildkraut is the elegant owner of the local saloon.

The copy of Rangers Of Fortune I saw on YouTube shows this film is in sore need of restoration. It's worthy enough to be saved if for nothing else than one unusual Albert Dekker.