Bells of Rosarita (1945) Roy Rogers, Trigger, George 'Gabby' Hayes, Dale Evans, Adele Mara Movie Review

Bells of Rosarita (1945)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Bells of Rosarita (1945)

A Choir, Some Cowboys and a Circus

After her father passes away Sue Farnum (Dale Evans) inherits the circus, unfortunately her late father's business partner claims that he never repaid the money he lent him and now plans to take the circus as repayment. With Sue and her friends convinced the debt was settled they find themselves being aided by Roy Rogers and a host of western movie stars who not only decide to put on a show to help raise money but sort out the cheating, no good business partner.

Normally when it comes to these older 1 hour westerns I find myself using words like usual and familiar to describe them but those words don't immediately come to mind after watching "Bells of Rosarita". The reason being is that firstly we have the amusing set up of whilst we have Dale Evans playing a character we have various western movie stars playing themselves with the story seeing the circus world crossing with the movie world. But we also have The Robert Mitchell Boy Choir providing a couple of musical interludes which are both different to the normal and a pleasure to listen to. The thing is that the set up isn't anything breathtakingly new as we have a movie which involves a movie being made but it certainly peps up one of these old westerns.

But whilst you have this entertaining set up of behind the scenes "Bells of Rosarita" does have those usual bits as well. As such we have Gabby Hayes putting in a fun performance, there is also Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers and of course we have some trouble for Roy Rogers to get his teeth in to so along with Trigger can finish the movie a hero. The thing is that because of the entertaining set up of behind the scenes these usual and familiar elements are not as ordinary as they usually are.

What this all boils down to is that "Bells of Rosarita" put a smile on my face and to be honest it is a long time since one of these old westerns achieved that. The thing is that whilst the behind the scenes is not anything new it breathes life into this western as does the inclusion of The Robert Mitchell Boy Choir.


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