'Neath the Arizona Skies

A cowboy (John Wayne) protects a little half-Indian girl from crooks eyeing to ransom her for a portion of the oil lease she’s inherited.

‘Neath the Arizona Skies does not start well. Finding a good child actor is, admittedly, very hard. Big-budget productions utilize nationwide casting calls and audition hundreds of performers. The filmmakers here, apparently, went the economy route and just picked the first kid they could find.

The result, Shirley Jean Rickert, turns in one of the worst performances ever, even by child-actor standards. She mumbles her lines and often doesn’t even look at her co-stars. Indeed, if she didn’t disappear for much of the film after the first ten minutes or so, ‘Neath the Arizona Skies would be unwatchable.

But thankfully, she does disappear, and the film settles into a typical John Wayne b-western production, with some good stunt work courtesy Yakima Canutt, who also stars as the film’s baddie. Frequent co-star Gabby Hayes has a smaller part this time around (he didn’t even make the credits) much to the film’s detriment, but the story moves along fast enough, making ‘Neath the Arizona Skies passable for fans of Wayne’s other early b-westerns, but certainly not worth seeking out.