Monday, October 7, 2013

Character actress RUTH ROBINSON and ROLL ALONG, COWBOY (Principal, 1937)



Cecilia Parker, in the Smith Ballew oater Roll Along, Cowboy, enjoys something few grade B, or in this case grade Z, actresses ever did: having a living ma. As we have seen most sagebrush heroines came complete with an aged and widowed father (or, if he turned out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, uncle), but once in a while, and for plot purposes, they would have a mater who, as in the present case, owes heavily on a mortgage held by a dastardly villain. 

Miss Parker's much beleaguered mother is played here by Ruth Robinson, who turned up in scores of mostly unbilled bits in A films and TV shows between 1938 and her death at the age of 76 in 1966. 

Robinson plays a similar role in the 1941 Bill Elliott Western Across the Sierras, where she witnesses her shopkeeper husband being gunned down by the avenging villain he helped send to prison. This time, her daughter is played by genre regular Luana Walters. Ironically, the hero, Bill Elliott, played the blackguard out to steal her cattle in Roll Along, Cowboy.

Robinson's final series Western appearance came in Gene Autry's Down Mexico Way (1941). She later guested on such TV shows as "Range Rider" and "Buffalo Bill,Jr."

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