AllMovie

One of the era's more tolerable juvenile actresses, Edith Fellows helps make Heart of the Rio Grande a surprisingly pleasant Gene Autry Western, and that despite a plot as old as the hills that surround Bronson Canyon, CA, where most of the filming took place. The songs are first-rate and Autry is his old reliable self, but the action, what there is of it, is almost an afterthought, and Smiley Burnette's tired comedy relief is not improved by the addition of a diminutive lookalike (Joe Strauch Jr.).