For the life of me, I can't figure out what was supposed to be meant by the title, "The Singing Hill". A better one might have been 'Ridin' Down That Old Texas Trail' or some variation of it, since that was the song that book-ended the story. A lot of Gene's films followed that formula and it would have made more sense to my thinking.
The story itself was a familiar one, as businessman Ramsey (George Meeker) pays Jo Adams (Virginia Dale) an advance of twenty five thousand dollars on an option to buy her ranch. That sounded like a pretty fair amount of money to me, until it was revealed later in the story that her spread consisted of fifty thousand acres. Holy cow, that would have been fifty cents an acre!
Of course, if Ramsey takes over, the rest of the local ranchers would be plain out of luck, as he'd control access to the local railroad, and without passage to market, they wouldn't be able to ship their cattle. For her part, Miss Adams doesn't really have a stake in the outcome, since she inherited the ranch and would just as soon sell. The strange thing about the story was her relationship with Gene; even though he was the foreman of her ranch, they would alternately seem supportive and antagonistic to each other. It was a little disorienting in the early going, but you could see the resolution coming when Miss Adams saw how the locals reacted to her selling out. You knew her better side would come out in all this.
As usual, there are quite a few songs in the mix to keep things lively. Teenager Mary Lee appears again in an Autry flick as a pal of the cowboys and shares in a couple of the musical numbers. The real surprise for me here was listening to Gene break into a rendition of 'Blueberry Hill'. Not quite as lively as the version Fats Domino recorded in 1956 to become an international hit, but to hear Gene do it was still quite a thrill.
The story itself was a familiar one, as businessman Ramsey (George Meeker) pays Jo Adams (Virginia Dale) an advance of twenty five thousand dollars on an option to buy her ranch. That sounded like a pretty fair amount of money to me, until it was revealed later in the story that her spread consisted of fifty thousand acres. Holy cow, that would have been fifty cents an acre!
Of course, if Ramsey takes over, the rest of the local ranchers would be plain out of luck, as he'd control access to the local railroad, and without passage to market, they wouldn't be able to ship their cattle. For her part, Miss Adams doesn't really have a stake in the outcome, since she inherited the ranch and would just as soon sell. The strange thing about the story was her relationship with Gene; even though he was the foreman of her ranch, they would alternately seem supportive and antagonistic to each other. It was a little disorienting in the early going, but you could see the resolution coming when Miss Adams saw how the locals reacted to her selling out. You knew her better side would come out in all this.
As usual, there are quite a few songs in the mix to keep things lively. Teenager Mary Lee appears again in an Autry flick as a pal of the cowboys and shares in a couple of the musical numbers. The real surprise for me here was listening to Gene break into a rendition of 'Blueberry Hill'. Not quite as lively as the version Fats Domino recorded in 1956 to become an international hit, but to hear Gene do it was still quite a thrill.
