Girl from Tobacco Row (1966) User Reviews (4)

Tex Ritter!

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 27 June 2021]

One of my favorite things about Ron Ormond's movies is that he brings back old western stars - often to my surprise - and gives them work long after Hollywood stopped hiring them. The congregation in this movie is led by Reverend E. F. Bolton, who is played by Tex Ritter, a singing cowboy who was the father of John Ritter and the Oscar-winning writer of "The Ballad of High Noon" from High Noon.

Bolton's ministry is about to be tested, because a convict named Earl "Snake" Richards - played by Earl "Snake" Richards - is looking for some stolen cash in town before being taken in by the preacher's son Tim (Tim Ormond, always a welcome sight) and falling for his daughter Nadine* (Rachel Romen, Maggie from Run, Angel, Run!). Also, his wife Rita is played by Rita Fey, who also is in Ormond's The Burning Hell.

Country DJ and one-time The Nashville Network staple Ralph Emery shows up as a hit man, as Snake is being watched by the mob. He has a vision that he's going to die surrounded by money and, well, he gets what he wants. If you're wondering, who is that Vic Naro who plays the crime boss, well it's Ron Ormond.

For a movie that promises, "A girl wilder than a peach orchard hog!" this is all pretty innocent. But it's also crazy, because it somehow goes from preaching to country music to crime, sometimes all in the same moment.

*Nadine has some serious daddy issues, lusting after older men by literally screaming, "When you see snow on the mountaintop, there's always fire in the furnace!"

An odd little curio mostly of interest to sociologists and musical historians.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 12 July 2014]

"The Girl from Tobacco Row" is one of the strangest low-budget films I've ever seen. While it's far from a good film, it is strangely entertaining and a curio that might be of interest to music historians and sociologists.

The film begins with a bunch of prisoners escaping from a road gang (note to readers: in some parts of the US, mostly non-violent prisoners are used for road crews to cut weeds, dig ditches and the like). Before this occurs, however, one of the prisoners tells the other where he's hidden some stolen loot. Not surprisingly, this prisoner with the loot is killed in the escape. His friend, 'Snake' Richards (played, interestingly by 'Snake' Richards!) manages to escape and you assume he'll soon go looking for the money. And, incidentally, a gang leader (Tex Ritter*) assumes that someone will come looking for the money--and he and his gang will wait to catch him and take the money for themselves.

In between the escape and the big confrontation is a lot of film--and very little plot. Snake is taken in by a preacher and his family and they welcome him--and they go to a lot of church services. Not surprisingly, Snake is torn between choosing between good (hard work and honesty) and evil (running off with stolen funds). Which path will Snake take?

As I said, though, there was very little plot and dialog. Mostly, the film consisted of one song after another after another. It honestly looks as if the filmmaker Ron Ormond went into the Tennessee countryside and rounded up all the local non-professional acts that he could and then put them on film. Some of it made some sense---such as the gospel and country music singers. But, there were also some odd acts including one group that did a rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"** and another that did a harmonica version of the Rimsky-Korsokov song "Flight of the Bumblebee"! The acts weren't bad--just odd. And, it's very obvious that they were recorded in some studio and then pretended to perform on film.

So is it any good? Not particularly. But, considering almost everyone you see in the film are non-actors, it's not bad either.

*Tex Ritter is an odd addition to the film. While he's billed first, he's really just a supporting character. Top billing was done because he was a singing cowboy movie star from the 1940s.

**Non-Americans might not know this, but "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a song strongly associated with the North during the Civil War. So, hearing these Southern folk performing this song was very surprising--especially back in the 1960s when sentiments in the South were decidedly less pro-North than they are today.

solid rural drive-in melodrama from Ron Ormond, with Tex Ritter in fine form

[django-1 · 9/10 · 24 October 2004]

Watching this film again after many years, I must say that it is a solid piece of work from writer-producer-director Ron Ormond. It is perfectly pitched at the Southern drive-in audience of the mid-60s and features lots of action, a crime-related plot, lots of religious homilies from Tex Ritter playing a preacher, lots of superb downhome music, and nice Tennessee atmosphere (shot at the Starday Records Movie Ranch!). This was one of Ritter's last films, and thankfully he is not just a guest star as he was in Forty Acre Feud, but the true star of the film along with Earl Snake Richards. Ritter could read the phone book and make it sound profound, so it's great to see him delivering sermons to his flock and life lessons to his family so convincingly in this film. Star Earl "Snake" Richards (who was also star of Ormond's WHITE LIGHTNIN ROAD, which is worth seeing too) is better known to rock'n'roll fans as Earl Sinks, the man who replaced Buddy Holly in the Crickets and who sang on the original version of "I Fought The Law." He also made a lot of records under different names in the 60s, but by the mid-60s had solidified a career as Earl Richards and made many country singles, well into the 70s. He has also been a successful songwriter and music publisher, with a career still going today. Interestingly, in this film, when Tex Ritter's older daughter, the "girl from tobacco row" of the title, puts the move of Snake's character, he goes instead for the younger (and more conservative) daughter Rita, played by Rita Faye (who also had a successful country music career before this as "Little" Rita Faye and who played on some of Patsy Cline's records), and if I'm not mistaken, Richards-Sinks and Rita Faye were married in real life. The soundtrack music is wonderful, real downhome country with fiddles, autoharps, and banjos, and the on-screen musical performances include such traditional performers as Martha Carson and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith. In addition, Johnny Russell both acts (as the sheriff and boyfriend of the older daughter mentioned above) and sings a song, AND plays fiddle, both on his own song and accompanying Richards. Russell, who passed away a few years ago, wrote "Act Naturally" and many other hit songs, as well as gaining country music immortality by recording the classic "Red Necks, White Sox, and Blue Ribbon Beer" in the early 70s, a song that will always be a symbol of that era. While GIRL FROM TOBACCO ROW is a low-budget film and will no doubt look amateurish to people who want slick, assembly-line Hollywood product, it may well be Ron Ormond's best-made film of the 1960s, and AS A FILM it's well above most of the other drive-in country-music films of the 1960s in that this is actually a solid drama on its own and the music is secondary. And it should be a must-see for Tex Ritter's fans. I highly recommend it to anyone who finds the above description appealing. Bravo to Ron Ormond for getting everything right with this one.

Chew this Tabacco

[amosduncan_2000 · 8/10 · 15 May 2007]

All of the Ron Ormond films I've seen are amusing and entertaining, and this is the best of the ones I've seen. He is one of the great "primative" low, low budget filmmakers, and if you are open at all to such things, you gotta check him out.

It's sad that Tex's son John is gone now too, I always wanted to meet him and ask him what he thought of this movie. Love the Harmonica act, who I believe appear in another Ormond film. If you ever wonder what it was like to go to a backwoods drive-in in the sixties, I can't see any movie putting you their more that this one. I know Ron's son was selling the films on video some years back, I wonder if he ever gets them on DVD.