The Forty-Niners

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• 1932
• 0 hr 59 mins
• Drama, Action & Adventure

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"Tennessee" Matthews is a trader dealing in buffalo hides at his post situated on the North Platte River at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. There Jed Hawkins and his daughter Virginia are waiting for an escort for their wagon trail headed for California. "Widow" Melindy Spriggs is also with the train and has intentions of trapping Hawkins as her next husband, although his disposition to drink is very trying to her 'dry' ways. "Squaw" O'Hara, called such because he has a habit of taking up with Indian women (which may well be very politically incorrect now, but writer F. McGrew Willis did not name his villain such with an eye on the PC world of the future, and revisionist film history will not intrude here) is hired as the train's scout. O'Hara is one bad character indeed and his real vocation is misguiding wagon trains into traps so they can be looted. At the present time, O'Hara has taken up with a beautiful Indian girl named Lola who lives in a hut where O'Hara makes frequent visits and stores the booty from the many caravans he has betrayed, and has full intentions of doing the same with the Hawkins train. He may only be visiting to check on the inventory, but the pre-code days implication is that he considers Lola as part of the inventory. He and Matthews both fall in love with Virginia, but it is plain to see she prefers Matthews. She even sends him a rose. This displeases O'Hara so much that he beats up Lola out of frustration, and Matthews comes to her aid. He puts an arm around her to comfort her and, of course, that is when Virginia rounds the corner and jumps to the conclusion that Matthews is a two-timer in buckskin.(Which in the real world he might have been since Lola is about three numbers higher on a politically incorrect scale of 1-10 than Virginia is, and Lola ain't no ten herself.) Virginia covers her heartbreak by encouraging O'Hara, which is somewhat akin to pouring coal-oil kerosene on a fire, as O'Hara is not a man who waits for any signs of encouragement anyway. Comes the dawn , O'Hara begins to lead the settlers west to California, but has already notified his Indian friends just where he will lead them for an easy attack. But Matthews has other plans. Earlier Gordon DeMain (as Hawkins) gets drunk and sings "Oh, Melindy" to the widow, which marks the only time DeMain sang in a western film and the only time Fern Emmett was serenaded in a film, western or otherwise.