Fifty Before '50: THE PHANTOM STALLION

 by JB

Uh-oh! It’s the last of the “singing cowboy” Westerns!

“The Singing Cowboy” is a musical genre that has sadly gone the way of the horse and buggy. Carl T. Sprague is usually given credit for being the first singing cowboy on radio with his hit song, “When the Work’s All Done This Fall.” Other singing cowboys from radio and records included Jules Verne Allen, Harry McClintock, Wilford Carter, and Tex Allen. Most of these performers grew up on ranches and had real experience working as cowboys. Their songs used simple, rustic vocals; simple arrangements; and simple, stringed-instrument accompaniment. Give it a listen:



Sound films brought with them a slew of new singing cowboys: Gene Autrey, Bob Baker, Ken Curtis, Dick Foran, Vaughn Monroe, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, and Rex Allen. This subgenre of film was incredibly popular from the early 1930s through the 1950s. Rex Allen is considered the last of the singing cowboys... and The Phantom Stallion the last of the singing cowboy Westerns.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Rex Allen (Rex Allen) returns to California and finds his old buddy Slim (Slim Pickens) working for curmudgeonly ranch owner Mike Reilly (Harry Shannon). Reilly has been losing prize horses, and he wonders where they have gone.

His niece Claire Reilly (Carla Balenda) and his violent foreman Gil (Don Haggerty) have been having a little ranch romance. Not incidentally, Claire is Mike Reilly's only heir.

Rex prevents someone on the ranch from being trampled to death by the titular beast, and Reilly’s adopted son Tony (Peter Price) tries to get to the bottom of all this horsey intrigue. Will Rex take Tony's side? Is there a secret brewing at the ol' ranch? Can horses dream?

ANNOYING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PAUSE: Shortly after getting married in 1987, my lovely wife and I drove into Chicago one summer day (probably to attend the Music Box Theater, but this cannot be confirmed) and ended up at an antique shop called Yesterday in the shadow of Wrigley Field. There, we found an original one-sheet poster for The Phantom Stallion and fell in love with it. We bought it. We took it home. We had it framed. We hung it in the upstairs hallway, where it remained for thirty years. We never actually saw the film.

Meanwhile, Yesterday closed in 2019 following owner Tom Boyle’s passing. His collection was liquidated. The building was demolished in the summer of 2020 to make way for a three-story residential building. This is sad. Chicago has thousands of three-story residential buildings. It will never have another Yesterday.

Flash forward to 2024. My lovely wife and I move to California, and we take The Phantom Stallion poster with us. It hangs proudly in our great room. Friend-of-the-site Heath Holland of Cereal at Midnight pays a visit, notices the poster, and asks me if I have ever seen the film. No, I explain it has never been released on any home video format that I know of. He asks if I have checked the YouTube machine. Of course, I haven’t, because I am old and uninformed. Of course, it’s there. After 35 years, I finally get to watch The Phantom Stallion.

It's delightful! At a brisk 53 minutes, it never wears out its welcome. It’s peppy. The performances are great. As I’m watching it, I slowly realize that ranch owner Harry Shannon played Kane’s father in Citizen Kane!

It was a hoot to see a “young” Slim Pickens performance; I’m far more familiar with “old” Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, The Getaway, and 1941. (That’s Slim Pickens, not Slim Shady.) The plot is simple, but involving. The bad guys are really bad; they actually contemplate killing horses and children. They are the worst. Rex Allen towers above the whole thing with that incredible voice of his; he spent the end of his career narrating Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventure nature films.

The Phantom Stallion is perfect for our upcoming Junesploitation marathon month; you can watch it on June 7, 16, 21, 22, 26, or 29th. The choice is yours. You can watch the film right now, right here: