Ridin' on a Rainbow (1941)

If you are planning a daring bank heist, then when better than when the showboat is in town and all the cowboys are onboard watching the action whilst their recent wages are safely ensconced in it's safe. Then, who better that the clown on that very boat to serve as their money mule and smuggle the cash out of town as the boat moves onto the next town where there can all rendezvous and split the dosh? Unfortunately for the costumed-up "Pop" (Byron Foulger), he drops a big fluffy button during the murderous robbery and that is spotted by the singing cowboy detective "Gene" (Gene Autry) who is soon working with the sheriff (Guy Usher) to track him down. There's no hiding aboard for "Pop" now, so he flees leaving his loot and some instructions with unsuspecting daughter "Patsy" (Mary Lee) and her surprisingly numerate pooch. That doesn't go to plan either, and with the robbers now suspecting a bit of duplicity from their ertswhile partner and his daughter, it falls to that very dog, Gene and his ever reliable sidekick "Frog" (Smiley Burnette) to save the day before his clowning around days are very much over. Nope, there's not an ounce of jeopardy from this thinnest of storylines, instead what we have is an amiable enough vehicle for a star who was never one of my favourites. Autry looks the part of the all-American action here well enough, but I found him to be a fairly charisma-free operator on screen and his voice didn't get my toes tapping either. Burnette tries hard - in the Andy Devine mould, and Lee proves to be quite a game character as she wants to save her errant pop and keep her dog safe from the not so very menacing thieves. "Be Honest With Me" is the standout from a bunch of songs that do have familiar rings to them and this benefits from being a quickly paced eighty minutes that races along quite entertainingly - if entirely forgettably.