The Bronze Buckaroo (1939)

Hannah Jones

The Bronze Buckaroo is a B-Western starring Herb Jeffries as the Bronze Buckaroo, aka Bob Blake. There is also a shallow romance subplot between the Bronze Buckaroo and Betty, who is the sister of Bob’s missing friend, Joe Jackson, and a more fully developed comedic subplot between Bob’s slow witted sidekick, Dusty, and Slim, Betty and Joe’s ranch hand, which involves a talking mule, ventriloquism, and a shifty poker match. Bob must find his friend Joe Jackson before he is killed by his conspiring neighbor for a fortune’s worth of gold found on Joe’s land. The Bronze Buckaroo stars an almost all African-American cast, many of whom break out in several western-blues harmonies throughout the film. The movie has a necessary villain, Buck Thorne, who is in a hurry to kill Joe Jackson before he can even get a signature from him for the deed to his ranch. The movie ends with a necessary happy ending, the villains arrested, Dusty finally outwitting Slim and Bob riding off into the Western landscape with Betty.

The filming of The Bronze Buckaroo is in black and white and is low quality. The cuts are obvious, the dubbed voices do not match the character’s movements, the sound is scratchy and unclear, the lighting often flushes the characters out or is too dark to see them by, and the scenery and props are simple. It is hard to tell whether the movie is so cheaply made because it is a B-Western or because it is a B-Western intended for a specifically African American audience, and, thus, limited in marketing possibilities and profits. It is obvious from other Westerns of the time that the ability to make a action sequence with convincing sound effects and clever cuts was possible (i.e. Destry Rides Again or Stagecoach), so it is curious that this Western was so poorly funded, comparatively.

While the main plot is generic (which Richard Maltby would contend is what a film audience wants), the movie is fascinating because of its difference as an African-American Musical Western. While, there are several websites now dedicated to Herb Jeffries, who is esteemed as a role model for being the hero of the black Western, the racial insensitivity of this movie is apparent. The “good” ranch family and the smart and smooth hero of the movie seem to be carefully placed because of their light skin tones. I don’t say this in an attempt to search for racial injustice (too easy to find in the 1930’s), but rather to suggest that the film was concerned with a broader economic appeal. One need only look at the cover of the Bronze Buckaroo to see that is being marketed as, simply, a Western—and a rather Caucasian-looking one at that (See image below). The only difference being marketed is its rather uncommon musical quality, not its cast.

“Roaring Round-Up of Song-Studded Thrills!”