Cowboy Jeff Larabee (Crosby) is on his way home after performing in rodeos in Madison Square Garden, when he finds Doris Halloway (Farmer) hiding on the train. Jeff thinks Doris is poor, but in the great tradition on 1930s Hollywood, Doris is actually an heiress running away from an unwanted marriage who is escaping to her aunt Penelope's (Lucile Gleason) ranch.
Shot on location at the Alabama Hills in Lone Pine, California, a well-used location for Westerns, with the rodeo sequence shot at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Rhythm on the Range was directed by Norman Taurog from a screenplay by Jack Moffitt, Sidney Salkow, Walter DeLeon, and Francis Martin, based on a story by Mervin J. Houser. Edith Head, who had worked under Paramount's biggest costumer, Travis Banton, and later became head of costumes after Banton's departure, was in charge of dressing the stars.
Crosby sung many songs in the film, with the most famous being Johnny Mercer's I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande, which became a cowboy standard. Crosby also sang Roundup Lullaby, Empty Saddles, Drink it Down, and I Can't Escape from You .
Frances Farmer was not the first choice to play Doris; Merle Oberon was slated for the role, but negotiations with Samuel Goldwyn (to whom she was under contract) failed. Jean Arthur, Olivia de Havilland, and Marsha Hunt were also considered before Farmer, who was in the middle of a seven-year contract with Paramount, got the part. Martha Raye had been discovered while appearing at the famous Trocadero nightclub in Hollywood, which resulted in director Norman Taurog ordering a part written for her for the film and signing her to a $1300 a week contract. Rhythm on the Range reunited Raye with Bob Burns from their vaudeville days, where he had bought her an ice cream when she was seven years old.
Raye burst into tears at the premiere of the film at the Paramount Theater in New York in July 1936, as the audience applauded half-way through her You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini) musical number. She later said she was "[b]awling so hard, I didn't see myself for the rest of the movie." The critics weren't crying when the film was released, they raved about Martha Raye. Frank S. Nugent, who titled his review for The New York Times "Salute a New Comedienne in Rhythm on the Range ," admitted that while Bing Crosby and the film were both good, he preferred "to think of Rhythm on the Range as our screen introduction to Martha Raye. Miss Raye is a stridently funny comedienne with a Mammoth Cave, or early Joe E. Brown, mouth, a dental supply vaguely reminiscent of those frightening uppers and lowers they used to hang over the portals of painless extraction emporia, and a chest which, in moments of burlesque aggressiveness, appears to expand fully ten inches." Rhythm on the Range proved to be a financial hit for Paramount and launched Martha Raye on a career that lasted fifty years.
SOURCES: The Internet Movie Database Nugent, Frank S. "Salute a New Comedienne in 'Rhythm on the Range' at the Paramount" The New York Times 30 July 36 Pitrone, Jean Maddern Take it from the Big Mouth: The Life of Martha Raye Shelley, Peter Frances Farmer: The Life and Films of a Troubled Star
