Lady from Louisiana

When this story begins, Julie (One Munson) and John Reynolds (John Wayne) meet and fall for each other when he arrives in New Orleans. Little do either realize that they are both destined to be on the opposite side. It seems that Julie's father, the General (Henry Stephenson), is head of the lottery and the new Anti-Lottery League has brought in John to clean up this racket.

While John thinks the General is his big problem, the General isn't that bad a guy. But neither realize just how low and dangerous the General's assistant, Blackie (Ray Middleton) is. When the General starts to suspect, the General is murdered...and Blackie encourages his lottery ticket salesmen to use ANY tactic to get tickets sold. It essentially becomes a shakedown racket...and folks pay protection by buying tickets...or else.

Can the nice guy John manage to clean up this den of thieves? And what about Julie? After all, she is foolish enough to blame John for the death of her father!

The style of this film is very similar to Wayne's other films in this time period. Since he's becoming more of a star, the budgets and look of the films have gotten much better than his cheap B- westerns of the 1930s. But despite looking much better and having a spectacular finale in this film, the Republic films are essentially B-movies with longer running times and bigger budgets. There were exceptions at this time (such as the films he did with John Ford, such as "Stagecoach") but this film fits in style-wise with Wayne's "Seven Sinners", "Dark Command" and "In Old California"...rather formulaic but enjoyable. My only quibble is that the baddie is named 'Blackie'...and yet no one seems to suspect him of villainy through most of the film!!