Growing up: Mature themes in Tom Tyler’s films “The Desert Pirate” and “Partners of the Trail”

Tom Tyler with Frankie Darro in "The Desert Pirate"

Since the beginning of his career as a leading man in western silent films, Tom Tyler’s films were intended for a young audience. The stories were cut and dried with the occasional creative plot such as the King Arthur theme in “The Sonora Kid” in 1927, but it was also that year when a more mature theme made its appearance in “The Desert Pirate”. For a story that dealt with the hero turning initially villainous to a young boy’s eyes marked a rite of passage to adulthood to the youthful audience, as was the case during the first four decades of the twentieth century. 

Ten years old when he filmed “The Desert Pirate”, Frankie Darro is Jimmy Rand, a boy whose father John (Vester Pegg) is the leader of a gang of criminals who engage in cattle rustling. Nicknamed “The Desert Pirate”, John Rand pulled off his biggest job yet, along with his henchmen, shuffling off their new booty across the Great Basin Divide. Sheriff Tom Corrigan (Tom Tyler) is hot on their trail, having already caught six of John’s henchmen. Much to Rand’s consternation, one of his men, Shorty Gibbs (Thomas G. Lingham), left the gang on his own volition, only to try and rejoin. Late on night, Rand and Gibbs end up fighting while hiding out by Rock of the Snakes. At the center of the fight is Rand's young son Jimmy. Rand is under the impression that his son has no idea as to what is going on with regards to his illegal activities, and he seems blind to the fact that Jimmy is indeed aware, a fact brought up by Gibbs. Having no mother, the last thing Jimmy needed to know was that he did not have a real father figure in his life. For Rand, having to worry about his son knowing that he is an outlaw, was just as bad as worrying about Corrigan tracking him down and shooting him. Later that evening at the Rand homestead, John seriously asks his son Jimmy if he knew about the cattle rustling the elder Rand was involved in. It is at this moment when Jimmy feels like he has already lost his father, even though his father loves the boy very much, but not to the point where he is willing to go straight, and is not in a position to go straight, being unable to afford supporting a son. For all intents and purposes, the last person John Rand needs to lose is his son, but the law finally catch up with him.

In a major ambush, Tom Corrigan shoots The Desert Pirate, and discovering Jimmy, takes him under his wing. Tom feels bad for having shot the boy’s father, has a crisis of conscience before turning in his sheriff badge before moving away with Jimmy to a remote area and starting a new life together. The two pals arrive upon a distant ranch house and meet Ann Farnham (Duane Thompson), whose father is the owner. After making a gambling deal of his ranch to a bandit named Norton (Edward Hearn), the elder Farnham appeals to Tom to help save the property. More than happy to help the Farnhams due to his growing romance with Ann, Tom successfully defends their side while having it out with the crooked Norton. With the Farnham ranch in the clear, Tom marries Ann, and become new parents for Jimmy, the boy who lost his birth father through traumatic means, yet a much greater good happened for him which made for a happy ending.

“The Desert Pirate” marks the onscreen reunion of Tom Tyler with Frankie Darro after Tom's fans wrote in to FBO complaining about their separation during “The Cherokee Kid”.  In many ways, “The Desert Pirate” is a milestone in Tom Tyler’s silent film career for its portrayal of a hero who needs to become a father figure to a young boy who lost his own father at the hands of the hero. As part of the mature themes in this silent film, having a “crisis of conscience” is explored in more than one character in the story. More importantly, Tom Tyler’s character as a former sheriff has the opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of a young boy, and does so, when he takes on the crook who is intent on stealing the Farnham ranch for himself.

Written by Frank Howard Clark, and Tom Tyler's early Hollywood friend Oliver Drake who created the scenario, "The Desert Pirate" offers the viewer a different facet of Tom's onscreen persona, possibly the earliest of its kind, pre-"A Rider of the Plains" (1931). Tom’s role as sheriff is in an awkward position in the story, assuming a responsibility he had not planned for but felt he had a moral obligation to do so with regards to his relationship with Frankie Darro’s character.

Film reviews and synopses have proven to be scarce for “The Desert Pirate” although one film booklet in Spanish does exist, “El Pirata del Desierto”, issue number 13 in the series Los Films del Far-West. Upon completing the translation of this film booklet to provide a synopsis for this silent film’s page of the Aventuras de Tom Tyler website, I discovered the story to be much more than another western full of adventure and intrigue; there is solid dramatization included that evokes an image of reality. Additionally, film stills and movie posters do exist, as well as some arcade and exhibit cards containing scenes of Tom Tyler with Frankie Darro.

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“Partners of the Trail” (1931) is a pre-Code sound film made for Monogram Pictures, a company formed the same year this film was released. Its adult themes are different from those as presented in “The Desert Pirate”; here, infidelity, friendship with the accused, and murder are intertwined to make a gripping thriller for Tom’s maturing audience.

Tom Tyler portrays Larry Condon, a man who discovers his wife has been having an affair behind his back. Intent on taking the law into his own hands, Larry waits silently in his house for the right moment to catch his wife with her lover, and shoots at him. Believing that he killed the man, and not getting a clear look at him in the dark, leaves the house and a sleeping wife for the state of Arizona to avoid being caught by the local authorities. Larry meets a man named John Durant (Reginald Sheffield), who was implicated in the affair with Larry's wife. Both men use pseudonyms upon meeting each other face to face, and not knowing about each other’s backgrounds, immediately become friends. It is not long before Larry and John share an eye for a beautiful local girl, Ruby Gerard (Betty Mack).

The two men spend time with each other in town until one day when local law enforcement takes note of one of the men who they suspect was involved with the shooting crime. Durant gets arrested by Sheriff McWade (Lafe McKee) and put in jail for the crime that Larry committed. Thinking that he is safe for now, Larry continues to stay in town and lay low, until Durant eventually breaks jail. Finally recognizing Larry for who he is, Durant wants to shoot him in an act of revenge but decides against it. Striving to make amends because he valued the friendship he has with Larry, Durant resolves the conflict between them. Sheriff McWade discloses to the two men that the person shot dead was Larry’s wife, which means that her lover was Durant. Confessing to the crime, Larry is escorted off to jail while Durant ends up marrying Ruby.

“Partners of the Trail” seems to be the perfect western to follow “A Rider of the Plains” (1931), another Monogram Pictures film. According to The Western: From Silents to Cinerama (1962) by George N. Fenin and William K. Everson, "Partners of the Trail" describes a rather unusual scene for a common fanfare western of the early 1930's: an inebriated Durant scribbling his name on the adobe wall in his residence. The authors explain the reason for scenes like this is due to the fact that they could be done, before the Hays Code went into place in 1934. Post-Code Hollywood, the exhibiting of a drunk character, especially the protagonist, would not be seen writing all over the walls inside a house, regardless of what the written words may be. Likewise in the use of the theme of infidelity – a topic which until “Partners of the Trail” remained non-existent in Tom Tyler westerns. So why infidelity? Aside from the Hays Code, it is possible that this one-dominant topic of many a dramatic silent film might be viewed as more translatable to sound film in Tom’s case. As the fourth feature-length sound film Tom Tyler starred in, his first-generation audiences were certainly old enough to understand this adult concept, especially as they approached the age of marriage and full-time employment. That carefree interval known as teenage years remained yet to exist, being established in the 1950’s. What also needs to be taken into consideration is that Tom’s character is originally perceived to be chivalrous towards his wife, supposedly protecting her from the man who Larry thinks he shot but did not. Surprisingly, “Partners of the Trail” was marketed in such a manner to maintain the friction between Tom Tyler and his nemesis Reginald Sheffield in the movie and downplay exactly who Tom murders in the story. Moreover, the actress who does play Tom’s wife remains unnamed, possibly due to her very limited onscreen time at the beginning of the story.

"Partners of the Trail" was written by Will Beale and adapted by George Arthur Durlam who also wrote the screenplay, and while this remains Beale's only story to make it to the silver screen ("Partners of the Trail" was later remade as "Sagebrush Trail" in 1933 with John Wayne and Lane Chandler in the starring roles), such descriptions as the above mentioned scene and Durlam's work on Tom Tyler's "Two Fisted Justice" (1931) suggest that the writing is tight enough to receive some degree of acclaim and perhaps notoriety of being a lost film. As with many of the lost Monogram Pictures films, film stills and posters from "Partners of the Trail" have survived, along with synopses from Hollywood trade publications. Considering the nature of Tom Tyler’s character in this western, it is easily comparable to his role of an outlaw in “A Rider of the Plains”, quite possibly even an extension of Blackie Saunders, had the character’s name not been changed. On the plus side, “Partners of the Trail” and “The Desert Pirate” remain the earliest examples of mature themes in Tom’s films which he clearly had no trouble handling at all when he fell into role.  For those who have seen and understood the intensity of Tom Tyler’s performance as Luke Plummer in “Stagecoach” (1939), the vast majority of his starring roles in westerns have been heroic, with few variations, but depict the fine actor he truly was.