Riders of Destiny is a 1933 pre-CodeWesternmusical film starring 26-year-old John Wayne as Singin' Sandy Saunders, and is one of the earliest examples of the singing cowboy movie. It was the first of a series of sixteen Lone Star Westerns made for Monogram Pictures between 1933 and 1935 by writer and director Robert N. Bradbury, and the first pairing of Wayne with George "Gabby" Hayes.
In a drought-stricken Western town, mysterious newcomer Singin' Sandy Saunders (John Wayne) finds the local sheriff shot in the back and helps him recover. He soon encounters what appears to be a stagecoach robbery by Fay Denton, who is actually trying to intercept her family's mail and payments before they're stolen by henchmen Bert and Elmer.
The true villain is James Kincaid, who monopolizes the region's only water source (via his dam) and extorts high rates from ranchers while pressuring them to sell their land cheaply. The Dentons' well is the sole independent source, making their property a key target.
Sandy, secretly a government agent sent from Washington to investigate the swindle (and deputized by the wounded sheriff), poses as a tough gunman to infiltrate Kincaid's operation. He thwarts attacks, outsmarts henchmen, and cleverly maneuvers events so the ranchers sign Kincaid's contracts with a special clause: if Kincaid fails to deliver water, his land reverts to public ownership.
Kincaid's men blow up the Dentons' well as part of a scheme to eliminate competition, but this unexpectedly releases an underground stream that drains Kincaid's dam, ruining his water monopoly and leaving his reservoir a mudhole. Exposed and desperate, Kincaid kills his own gunman in rage, then flees. Sandy pursues, shoots him, and Kincaid drowns in the new river.
With justice served, Sheriff Baxter returns, the threat ends, and Sandy—who has won Fay's heart—promises to return for supper (and her famous biscuits) as he rides off.
The movie was written and directed by Robert N. Bradbury and is one of the earliest examples of the singing cowboy movie. The role of Singin' Sandy Saunders was created for Wayne by Bradbury, who saw a market niche for the singing cowboy.[2]
Wayne's singing voice was dubbed and bore no resemblance to his unique speaking voice. The actual singer was Bill Bradbury, son of director Robert N. Bradbury and brother of Bob Steele.[4] The character of Singin' Sandy was not used again, but it paved the way for Gene Autry and other singing cowboys.[5]
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (May 2017)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Jinetes del destino]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Jinetes del destino}} to the talk page.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
