Gene Autry's *Rovin' Tumbleweeds* and the New Deal

Autry’s Rovin’ Tumbleweeds (1939) places New Deal programs at the forefront, this time in relation to flooding like that combated in The River, a documentary promoting TVA projects to thwart flooding on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The River makes it clear that our overuse of the land has caused erosion and loss of top soils that have contributed to the river’s flooding. Pare Lorenz wrote and directed The River in 1937 as a tool for the policies of the Roosevelt administration and the U. S. Farm Security Administration, policies that might be seen as both as socialist and as appropriate for eradicating some of the problems caused by the Great Depression. The film also promotes "the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as the solution to problems of flooding, agricultural depletion, and electrification" (Bordwell and Thompson 58).

Lorentz's The River claims that the best way to solve the problems humans have caused by their degradation of nature is to implement a technological project driven by culture and mankind: The TVA’s construction of enormous dams like the Norris Dam, started in 1933 and finished on March 4, 1936, at the head of the Tennessee River. As the film's narrator argues, "The old river can be controlled. We had the power to take the Valley apart. We have the power to put it together again." According to The River, the TVA’s dams “will transform the old Tennessee into a link of fresh water pools locked and dammed, regulated and controlled.” 

Autry’s Rovin’ Tumbleweeds concentrates on flooding as a problem without discussing its cause. The film instead focuses on its solution—a flood control bill facilitating programs like those promoted in The River but which the local congressman (Fuller) chooses not to support. Like Man of the Frontier, Rovin’ Tumbleweeds opens with a message about the power of water. The first part of the message reads, “Water—Man’s Greatest Friend,” and then we hear a thunder clap and see thrashing storms, and the rest of the message appears: “but unleashed, man’s greatest foe.” A newspaper headline shows us the repercussions of the storm when it claims, “Green River Bursts Banks.”

The force of water has been established, but Autry gives us the cause in an interview with a radio reporter, “We wouldn’t have had this storm—I just wanna tell ya—we wouldn’t have suffered this loss of life and property if that cheap politician Congressman Fuller had put through that flood control bill.” Autry blames politicians for the flooding without referencing a war against nature in Rovin’ Tumbleweeds, unlike the radio interviewer, who proclaims, “It looks like nature has called a truce,” when the storm ends.  Autry, on the other hand, has a philosophy that lines up with that portrayed in The River: To save working farmers and ranchers and their land, the government should intervene.

The film’s connection to New Deal programs rings through the community-minded film. After halting flooding, for example, Autry sings a song about flooding rivers with an image of New Deal proletariats in the background. Headlines that spring up throughout the film carry a similar message. When ranchers washed out by the flooding migrate to Rand County in search of work, headlines read: “Community Minded, Promised Land.” And Congressman Fuller serves as a representative of the corporation keeping them out (The Randville Development Corporation), offering Autry and his fellow workers a tangible entity to fight against, even going to jail to fight for their right to work.

Autry facilitates the fight between working people and greedy corporations and politicians first by singing on the radio and donating his earnings to the people, but his efforts are unsuccessful. Headlines read, “One man relief agency on behalf of all the migratory workers—unfortunately Gene’s generous contributions have proved pitifully inadequate in the face of the ever increasing hordes pouring into Rand County.” When Autry and Congressman Fuller meet at a railway station, however, Autry chooses to be “the man in office who’ll do something” to stop the flooding—a long-term environmental solution that will help ranchers reclaim their lands. The conflict is heightened then, since viewers discover that Halloway and Fuller are a team determined to buy up the land along the Green River before the flood control goes through. Autry’s efforts for the workers pay off—he saves the radio station and saves a camp of migrants from a sheriff who wants to burn them down, so he wins the Congressional election in a landslide.

After a series of failures in Washington D. C., Autry seems on the brink of getting the flood control bill through. But the film takes an odd turn at the end when another storm erupts and the Green River floods again. Gene convinces the Rand County migrants to help him sandbag the banks of the river, and Halloway has a change of heart, joining in with the migrants. On the radio, an announcer says, “With courage and cooperation” they “work side by side” and the flood control is passed. Halloway even gives his money to labor in an act that seems to draw on New Deal socialist inclinations. Environmental degradation is thwarted by community efforts that cross class lines here. The film argues effectively for measures like dams and levies, just as do New Deal films like The River.