West of the Divide (1934)
After his father is murdered, Ted Hayden assumes the identity of a dead outlaw to infiltrate the gang he suspects is responsible, working to expose the killers and track down his own missing younger brother before his cover is blown.
West of the Divide relies on the same stolen-identity plot device the Lone Star unit reused across several of Wayne’s westerns, with Robert N. Bradbury directing his regular stock company of George “Gabby” Hayes and Yakima Canutt for a shoot that, like its stablemates, likely wrapped in under a week.
Background
West of the Divide was directed by Robert N. Bradbury from a script he co-wrote with Oliver Drake, produced by Paul Malvern for Monogram’s Lone Star unit, with cinematography by Archie Stout; it was released February 15, 1934, and runs 54 minutes. Wayne plays Ted Hayden, who assumes the identity of a dead outlaw, Gat Ganns, to infiltrate the gang he believes murdered his father, using the disguise both to find the real killers and to track down his own long-missing younger brother. Filming took place near Bakersfield and Kernville, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of the Kern River Valley.
What to watch for
The stolen-identity device was a formula Bradbury and the Lone Star unit leaned on across several of Wayne’s pictures from this period, letting a B-western’s short shooting schedule reuse plot architecture rather than invent a new one each time. Gabby Hayes and stunt man Yakima Canutt, both regulars of Bradbury’s stock company, appear in support, with Canutt’s stunt and riding work doing much of the heavy lifting in the action scenes typical of these low-budget productions. Shoots on Lone Star westerns of this type generally wrapped in well under two weeks, and this one shows the same efficient, unfussy assembly.
