review for Driftin' River on AllMovie

A rather wooden performer at best, also-ran singing cowboy Eddie Dean was helped immeasurably in this otherwise average B-Western by the presence of former Columbia starlet Shirley Patterson. Having played the heroine in the 1943 serial Batman, the statuesque Patterson found her career going nowhere fast and she drifted into Gower Gulch westerns such as Driftin' River, her first of four with Dean. As rancher J. C. Morgan, Miss Patterson is a take-charge kind of heroine, who doesn't simply stand back and let the boys duke it out but is pretty persuasive with a gun herself. Also helping Dean this time is a fairly competent script by Frances Kavanaugh, whose tongue was planted firmly in cheek. A typical example of Kavanaugh's writing-style is the sign welcoming visitors to the film's lawless town: " Dow City -- here men live and die by their guns. If you doubt it, take a look at Boot Hill." Dean and villain Lee Bennett (or their stunt doubles) have a dandy of a fight in a bunk house and the former does well with his two songs, Tansey and Lew Porter's lilting title-tune and his own and Johnny Bond's humorous "Way Back in Oklahoma".