The First Rebel (1939) (aka Allegheny Uprising)

A time waster I only watched for the cast; it is an interesting look at how not to make a John Wayne film.

Wayne plays the real-life frontiersman James Smith. He clashes with a group of underhanded traders who start selling arms to the Natives in 18th century colonial America.

The star has bags of charisma, but the script has far too much clunky expositional dialogue, and he works better with less to say. The John Wayne character is already coming into shape. A loner, a leader, brave, intelligent, always does the right thing. No ambiguities. Does not answer to anyone

The two main co-stars are suitably slimy. George Sanders is an incompetent martinet colonial soldier, while Brian Donlevy is the businessman so unscrupulous, he will even trade with the British AND the Indians. When I say Indians, I mean white guys in Mohican wigs. Smith and his posse black up for a revenge attack on the Indians, but this is historically accurate.

The supporting characters are forgettable. Claire Trevor as Janie MacDougall is the never-going-to-happen love interest of Smith, and the best thing about Wilfrid Lawson as "Mac" MacDougall is his "och aye" Scottish accent.

Competently but unimaginatively filmed, The First Rebel suffers from a lack of action, and peeters out into a stiff courtroom drama.

Interestingly, it was banned at first in the UK by the Ministry of Information for portraying the British in a bad light.

An Eastern Westerner (1920)

An Eastern Westerner is a breezy, no nonsense Harold Lloyd comedy, that makes up for a lack of big belly laughs with the charm, upbeat persona, and energy of its star

Lloyd plays a spoiled young New Yorker, living the high life at his increasingly frustrated parent's expense. After one party too many, they decide to send the boy to a relative’s ranch out west in the town of Piute Pass ("It's considered bad form to shoot the same man twice on the same day."), where he falls foul of every cowboy cliché and trope you can think of.

The plot is flimsy, and the gags take precedence, as often the case with short silent films of this era. Although he did not have the vaudeville background of Keaton or Chaplin, Lloyd was still incredibly agile and athletic, as showcased here with some hair-raising stunts and great chase sequences (even if one does involve a disconcertingly Klan-like hooded gang).

Obviously, it looks a little crude and underdeveloped compared to his later, more assured works such as Safety Last, An Eastern Westerner is still well worth a look, both for the laughs and to compare it to the later films and see how people like Lloyd helped shape the medium.