The Old Corral (1936)

The Old Corral is a 1936 American Western film directed by Joseph Kane and starring Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, and Irene Manning. Based on a story by Bernard McConville, the film is about a sheriff of a small western town who sings his way into a relationship with a singer from a Chicago nightclub who earlier witnessed a murder. The supporting cast features Lon Chaney Jr. and Roy Rogers. The film features an unshaven Roy Rogers in his second Gene Autry film, then identified under his actual birth name, Leonard Slye, as the leader of the O'Keefe Brothers, played by the singing Sons of the Pioneers, a troupe of western singers trying to break into radio. Rogers' first appearance, in which he and his group rob a busload of people to garner publicity, ends with Autry threatening to arrest Rogers as soon as he's back on a horse. Sixteen months after The Old Corral was released, in the wake of a walkout from the studio by Gene Autry, newly renamed "Roy Rogers" starred in his first feature film, Under Western Stars. The Old Corral would remain Autry's and Rogers' only film together however Roy Rogers appeared in the Gene Autry film The Big Show (released 16 November 1936) with the Sons of the Pioneers as one of several musical acts appearing the film with no interaction with Autry.