Cowboy Clowns

The Rounders is an amiable knuckle-headed western about two lumpish modern cowpokes and their love-hate relationship with an obstreperous horse. Howdy (Henry Fonda) and Ben (Glenn Ford) ride the range in a deplorable old Dodge pickup, fleeing the specter of steady jobs. While Fonda broods about the plump divorcee he loved and lost at a dude ranch, Ford dreams of escape to a desert isle "where there ain't no grass, ain't no horses." Then the bronc-busters' skill is challenged by a blaze-faced roan given to bucking, biting and occasional drunkenness. At one point Ford is so enraged by the animal that he leaps into the truck and snorts: "I'm going to run over him--he'll never know what hit him." Later, wintering in the high country where they are hired to round up stray cattle, Ford muses moodily over whether he would rather see the roan made into soap or into dog food.

Though Writer-Director Burt Kennedy often pitches for the brand of horse laughs that usually issue from Walt Disney's stable, most of The Rounders is high dry comedy. Ford and Fonda, clearly relishing their antiheroic roles, perform with the brisk assurance of men who have won the West so often that they know just how to spoof it.

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