The Encyclopedia of Westerns (The Facts on File Film Reference Library)

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
WESTERNS

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
WESTERNS
HERB FAGEN
Foreword by
T
OM SELLECK
Preface by
D
ALE ROBERTSON
The Encyclopedia of Westerns
Copyright © 2003 by Herb Fagen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information contact:
Facts On File, Inc.
132 West 31st Street
New York NY 10001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fagen, Herb.
The encyclopedia of westerns / Herb Fagen; foreword by Tom Selleck;
pr
eface by Dale Robertson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8160-4456-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4381-3010-1 (e-book)
1. Western films—United States—Encyclopedias. 2. Western films—Italy—
Encyclopedias. I. Title
PN1995.9.W4 F27 2002
791.43'63278'03—dc21 2002026355
Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk
quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions.
Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at
(212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755.
You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at

Text design by Cathy Rincon
Cover design by Nora Wertz
Printed in the United States of America
VB Hermitage 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
To the memory of Budd Boetticher
(1916–2001)
The “Last Lion” of Western Films
Contents
Foreword
ix
Preface
xiii
Acknowledgments
xv
Introduction
xvii
Entries A to Z

1
Appendixes
503
Selected Bibliography
542
Index
545
When I was four years old my parents moved from Detroit to
California, and I can honestly say that I grew up on western
movies with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hop-Along Cassidy,
Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard, and Bob Steele. However, as a
youngster I had never ridden a horse except for those rides at
Griffith Park where they strap you on a pony.
Nevertheless, years later when I accidentally fell into act-
ing and made a couple of western-format commercials, at
least I wasn’t afraid of horses. I was able to get on the horse so
they could shoot a half-hour of me looking like an idiot, and
maybe three or four seconds of it would look okay for the
commercial.
This commercial led to a few parts, including the very first
I ever got when I was under contract with Fox. It was in an
episode of the western series Lancer, which aired on January
14, 1969. I was in what we call a “teaser” to the show—play-
ing a drunken cowboy who unwisely tries to pick a fight with
a guy with lots of guns, a hook for a hand, and a big German
shepherd. At the end of this “teaser,” that big German shep-
herd had pinned me to the wall.
This was my debut in a TV western.
I then did a bunch of unsold pilots and gained more and

more experience. Then came The Sacketts. My pal Sam
Elliott—we had been under contract together at Fox—was in
the movie and put in good word in for me with the higher
-
ups, including Bob T
otten, who was a terrific director. One
could see the loyalty he inspired in the marvelous cast he put
together. During our interview, Totten asked me if I could
ride. I said that while I wasn’t afraid of horses and had been
on a few of them, my answer had to be ‘No!” I assured him,
however, that I was a good athlete and I could learn. I think
he appreciated my honesty.
The finalists for the last two roles, younger brothers Orrin
and Tyrell Sackett, met at the Randall Ranch, where we spent
three days auditioning our skills. Jeff Osterhage (who played
Tyrell) and I walked over to the grandstands where Bob Tot-
ten, Glenn Ford, and Sam Elliott were sitting. Totten said,
“OK, I want you to go over and pick out a horse there, put a
saddle on it, and ride it back over here.” We did what he
asked. One actor became indignant and walked out because he
obviously had lied about his familiarity with horses.
Totten did not mince words with his actors, nor did he
coddle them. We knew that once the filming started, we were
going to have to look and act like real cowboys. I spent a lot
of time before the movie with wranglers Jay Fishburn and
Donna Hall. Donna really taught Jeff and me the ropes, and I
mean she taught us from the ground up—how to get on the
horse, get off the horse, and walk the horse.
We were young guys and wanted to gallop, but Donna
would have none of it. She said, “You can’t do that until you

can get on and off a horse, walk him down the street, and
make him stop and stand still. That’s 90 percent of what you’ll
do in a movie, and when you learn and look like a cowboy,
then I’ll let you do the other stuff.”
Based on two stories by Louis L’Amour, The Sacketts was
my indoctrination and my real introduction to the wester
n
genre, especially working with such seasoned actors as Jack
Elam, Glenn Ford, Slim Pickens, and Ben Johnson. Ben was
like a dad to us all, so I can really say that I learned from the
best.
A few years later
, we did The Shadow Riders (also based on
a book by Louis L’Amour) for director Andrew V
. McLaglen.
It was a r
eal honor because I met L’Amour, who gave me a
hardbound leather copy of the book and inscribed it with the
words, “Tom, you make my people live.” I believe it was the
only time that Louis L’Amour actually wrote a book from a
screenplay he was doing. For legal reasons, he had to write in
a new set of brothers, the Cravens. But as in The Sacketts, Sam
Elliott, Jeff Osterhage, and I played the thr
ee brothers.
As an ar
t form, the western film owes a great debt to guys
like John Ford. But long before Ford made his mark on the
genre, there was Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery,
dating back to 1903 and considered by many to be our first
real movie. Thanks to Ford and others, the western film has

become as much a part of our shared mythology as King
Arthur
. Ther
e has been a yearning in modern culture to go
back to simpler times. The frontier spirit is something that
never leaves us. The writer Anthony LeJeune once said that
the classic western always involves “a moral dilemma and a
challenge to the human spirit, the resolution of which, as John
Wayne says in the movie The Alamo, ‘speaks well for men.’”
There have been a lot of directors who have made top-
flight western films, but the old guard of the studio days,
especially John Ford, was superb. Just look at the top-ten list
by anybody who knows W
esterns. Invariably
, there will be
three or four John Ford movies.
Take My Darling Clementine. You become riveted by it.
Every two or three minutes comes a camera set-up that could
be turned into a portrait. It doesn’t have that crazy MTV
-edit-
ing pace we see today. It’s an intimate story with an intimate
face, and it’s one of my very favorite movies. Henry Fonda was
spectacular in the film. I’ve never seen him so tough. He had
Foreword
ix
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WESTERNS
an easy-going quality and clearly remains one of the quintes-
sential American actors.
Shane also had a huge early influence on me. What was
most important was the kind of tension and slow-to-act qual-

ity that is a great lesson in any western film. There wasn’t a
lot of needless gunplay
. Yet when a firearm did go off, it had
a resounding sound and power, as in that classic scene when
Elisha Cook Jr. is knocked off his feet by Jack Palance’s
bullet. It was appropriately frightening as a kid to see to the
power of a firearm and, I might add, the responsible way to
see it as well.
Howard Hawks’s Red River and John Ford’s Rio Grande are
other western favorites. Ford’
s Cavalry Trilogy (Fort Apache,
She Wor
e A Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande) are all fine movies,
yet I particularly like Rio Grande, the last entry in this out-
standing group. Ben Johnson and Dobe Carey (Harry Carey
Jr
.) were excellent in that extremely difficult “Roman riding”
scene (one person riding two horses, standing, with one foot
on each horse’s back). Claude Jarman Jr. was also in that
scene. He played John Wayne’s son and did some “Roman
riding” as well. Interestingly, he said that he had never ridden
much, but had great big feet and took to that special kind of
riding “like crazy.”
There are so many actors who I think are indelible in
westerns, but none more so than John Wayne. If you put
every Academy Award-winning actor, every actor, everybody
in the movie business into an ensemble movie with John
Wayne, he’s going to play the boss or the movie is going to be
a lie. That says a lot about him. He was very underrated as an
actor, and at the height of his career he played flawed charac-

ters. That’s something for which I’ve always had an appetite
because flawed characters learn something and consequently
can teach us a lot. I met John Wayne twice. We both went to
USC and were in the same fraternity, Sigma Chi, and I got to
slip him the fraternity grip, which was a big deal because as
western stars go, he was “the guy.”
I’m really not sure why they aren’t making more western
movies because when they make good ones they work like
crazy. In the last decade alone, two out of the top ten pictures
were westerns, Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves and Clint
Eastwood’
s Unforgiven. The real problem I think is that the
production end of Hollywood doesn’t know how to make
them. They know how to make deals. Some actors can play a
period piece like a Western; others are fine actors but have
more of a contemporary quality. You just can’t put whoever
you think is hot into any western and expect it to work.
Somehow, Hollywood started believing that they had to
make westerns more contemporary and modernize them. So
when the six-guns don’t shoot enough bullets, they invent
new hardware. I looked into making another western movie a
while back. It had a good script, but when I went to talk with
the director there were pictures on the wall of trains and other
artifacts that never existed. Once he said he designs his own
trains and creates his own universe, I knew immediately that
he was doomed to fail.
Today the movie crowd is so deal-oriented, so marketing-
oriented, that they don’t know what to do with a western
although they occasionally stumble into one. I feel the major
studios need to rethink how they’re doing them and how

they’re casting them. I don’t believe that for a minute that
westerns are dated. They don’t date if they’re made properly
and are really very lucrative if they are made by someone with
a little vision. Kevin Costner is someone who simply got it
right, and so did Simon Wincer (Quigley Down Under, Lone-
some Dove). Simon is Australian, but he has the right tools.
T
oday we don’
t have that stock company of actors we had
in the past, so it’s very hard to ground yourself. But in every
movie I have made with my partner Michael Brandman, I
have tried to include a Dobe Carey, a Barry Corbin, or a Wil-
fred Brimley. These are the people who ground your movie in
the specific period and genre. There are not as many around
as before, but they are national treasures. We need them, and
we need to celebrate them. They are wonderful actors.
The land, too, has to be treated like another character in
a western movie. It is usually the central place from which
conflict arises and from which romance blooms, even if it is
only the romance of the landscape. For example, Crossfire
T
rail evokes a strong sense of the landscape, and I’m not talk-
ing about radical environmentalism. Yet I do think that we’d
all like to live in a gr
eener, cleaner world, and I believe west-
erns harken back to that dream.
I am pleased today that Quigley Down Under is starting to be
recognized and is now even making some top-ten lists. It orig-
inally got a terrible distribution because the studio released it
the same month as Dances With Wolves and two weeks before

Three Men and a Little Lady, my sequel to Three Men and a Baby.
It made some money, then they pulled it in, took the cash, and
ran. Today, it is hard to obtain in video stores because it usually
is rented out. More than any other picture I have done, I get the
m
o
st response from Quigley Down Under. In fact, several rifle
companies are now making Quigley rifles. Yet I had to fight to
get it made. I had a lot of power at the time and I wanted to
make a western. John Hill had written a great story
, and quite a
few important stars like Steve McQueen had toyed with mak-
ing a film based on Hill’s story.
Another of my westerns, Crossfir
e Trail, is doing extremely
well now on DVD. It was a movie made for cable, but we gave
it the same type of pr
oduction value as we would have for the big
screen. Moreover
, Last Stand at Saber Ridge a few years earlier set
all records for Turner at the time of its release. Originally
designed to be shown on the big scr
een in the rest of the world,
it was shot as such. But Turner Pictures was acquired by Warner
Bros., and they let it slip through their fingers. It’s a shame
because such movies have a very strong after-release value.
But Hollywood seems to be primed for another round. I
was recently talking to my good friend Kevin Costner, who is
preparing another western, and so am I. Both of us are plan-
ning to shoot on location in Calgary, Alberta. I can’t wait to

get started. And when I get that stupid question as to why
people don’t want to see westerns any more, I remind them to
look at the ratings of my last movies. They were better than
good; they were great. Crossfire Trail was the highest-rated
program in the entire histor
y of cable television. Monte W
alsh
was the most-watched Friday program in basic cable history
and a number-four rating for all TV networks. So it’
s not that
westerns don’t work; it’s that bad westerns don’t work!
x
FOREWORD
xi
I guess some people have said that I have become the new
standard bearer for the western genre. I can’t speak to that but
I feel very lucky that people not only want to see me in west-
ern movies and to see more of them, but also that I am fortu-
nate enough to be able to make them. As I mentioned earlier
I did not grow up on a horse, nor was I raised on a ranch—
although I probably would have liked to have been.
But just to be a part of that universe, and to be accepted in
that universe, makes my whole life as an actor worthwhile.
—Tom Selleck
xiii
Westerns have been very special part of my life as an actor. I
made 15 western films between 1950 and 1957, then two suc-
cessful TV series—Tales of Wells Fargo (1957–62) and The Iron
Horse (1966–68). While my movie career began with uncred-

ited parts in The Boy with Green Hair (1948), Flamingo Road,
and The Girl from Jones Beach (1949), I was tapped for movies
almost 10 years earlier while still a raw teenager
.
It all started in W
ichita, Kansas, in 1939. I was 17 years
old and boxing in professional prizefights to make money. We
fought all matches “winner take all,” and we didn’t fight for
promoters. Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, had a man
out there watching the matches. One night after a fight, he
asked me to come to Hollywood to do a test for a picture
called Golden Boy about a young boxer. I couldn’t go because I
was still in school, and my mom wasn’
t about to let me go that
far away from home (we listened to our parents in those days).
I also had eight horses in training that I was preparing to be
polo ponies and couldn’
t walk away from them. So the part
went to another youngster by the name of William Holden.
Then World War II came along and took up the next few
years of my life. At one point, I was stationed in California. It
looked like we were getting ready to go overseas, so I called
my mom and asked her what she wanted for Christmas. She
said she had plenty of photographs and newspaper clippings
of me but that she didn’t have a portrait. She asked me if I
could get one for her.
Well, I talked to the guys in the outfit, and soon there
were 14 of us who went down to the Amos Carr Studio on
Wilcox and Hollywood Boulevard. Each of us got a picture
for our parents and gave the lady, Marian Parsons, our

addresses.
Later on, I started getting letters from people who had
seen my portrait at Amos Carr and wanted me to come to
Hollywood for a screen test. What had happened was that she
had blown it up and put it in the window. Now, after the war,
I didn’t have a job to return to. I had been badly injured so I
couldn’t go back to boxing. I tried to get back into the horse
business that I had lost during the war, without success. So
when one night, I came across those letters (a serviceman
never throws away a letter, I can tell you that), I told my mom
that I was going to Hollywood to see if I could get a job. She
said, “Well, son, do you think you can do that?” I said, “I
know I can’t if I don’t try.”
In February 1946, I arrived in Hollywood. I gave myself
24 months. If I wasn’t making a living in two years, it was back
to Oklahoma.
After 16 months, I began earning a living.
I got to know every office boy and every secretary in every
studio in town. Every time a new screenplay would come in,
they would call me. I’d meet them in the parking lot, and
they’d give me a script in a plain manila envelope, which I
looked at quickly. Then I’d go tell my agent to go to RKO or
Warner Bros. or wherever and tell them the name of the part
I wanted to read for. I wanted a part that was big enough to
be noticed, but not big enough that the audience would get
tired of me if I didn’t do a good job.
After about 20 or 30 attempts, I finally got a part in Fight-
ing Man of the Plains for 20th Century Fox, and that started
the whole thing. Directed by Edwin L. Marin, I played Jesse
James and helped Randolph Scott clean up the criminal ele-

ment in a Kansas town. Although I did some nonwestern
movies, I basically stayed within the western genre. In 1950, I
did The Caraboo Trail for 20th Century Fox, also directed by
Edwin L. Marin and again with Randolph Scott, and then Tw o
Flags West with Joseph Cotten, Linda Darnell, Jeff Chandler
,
and Cor
nel Wilde. By the time I did Return of the Texan for
Fox in 1952, I got top billing.
I like westerns. The story lines are fairly simple, the good
guys win and the bad guys lose. I think people today have for-
gotten what the word entertainment means. You don’t make
movies to show life as it is. Y
ou show life as you wish it were
or how you would like it to be. T
oo many films today have lost
their imagination. When we made western films, you did not
confuse them with today’s times and current trends. It was
pure entertainment. It took us away from our problems and
troubles because we were watching things that happened a
long time ago. They also presented a strong leading man who,
reluctantly or not, would assume responsibility and set things
right. This strong male presence, I feel, is important in a
western film.
To me, Gary Cooper epitomized the western hero. Joel
McCrea was right up there too, and so, of course, was John
Wayne. They were all real men. Yet there was something
about Gary Cooper. The toughest men I have known in the
world were usually the quietest. You got these guys running
around today flexing their muscles and acting tough. Well

Coop’s the one I would choose if it came to a fight. I got to
know him pretty well and would often hunt with him and
Clark Gable. Both were pretty much the same off screen.
Back then, movies were a business of personalities. That’s
what motion pictures really are, or should be.
I think Tom Selleck is the standard bearer for Westerns
today. He’s a leading man in an old-fashioned way. He’s hand-
some, he’s strong, and he’s big. With the right scripts he could
Preface
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WESTERNS
xiv
be around for a long time. There are some good actors
around like Sam Elliott, but they are more character types.
Tom has all the requisites to become a major force in the
genre and to continue that great line of western screen heroes.
The guys today try to bring stage techniques to the
motion picture industry, but it doesn’t work well in westerns.
Drama schools are producing the actors, and they have a great
influence on casting directors. Consequently, they’re using
their students, but these guys just don’t ring true, and that’s
what’s hurting the western. Most of these kids don’t know
what a beautiful picture is. Unfortunately, many of the folks
making movies recently have tried to destroy the hero image,
and that’s too bad. Take Custer, for example. Contrary to the
contemporary view, he wasn’t a dunce, and his life certainly
wasn’t a failure.
In the mid-1960s, I was offered five spaghetti westerns.
Everything was going fine until they told me I’d be away for
two years. I said you couldn’t stack enough money up in
trucks and bring it to me in order for me to spend two years

out of the United States. So I didn’t go, and I’ve never been
sorry. For one, it helped Clint Eastwood’s career. He’s a good
actor and has been a wonderful box-office attraction.
I think the spaghetti westerns had too much blood and
violence. If I had done them, they would have been different,
much lighter. Of course, that probably would have made
another enemy or two for me. What problems I had with peo-
ple in the industry were never the result of my being tem-
peramental about a bigger dressing room or things like that.
It all had to do with the story. If they were not going to make
the best story possible, then we were headed for some real dis-
agreements.
I’ve worked for lots of directors over the years, but the one
who stands out and never got the full credit he deserved was
a fellow named R. G. “Buddy” Springsteen. Among other
things, he directed the television series Tales of the Wells Fargo.
He knew and loved his work well and understood the business
too.
John Ford made some great pictures, par
ticularly Stage-
coach and She W
or
e a Yellow Ribbon, although I think ther
e were
better directors. I especially liked Ben Johnson’s performance
in Yellow Ribbon. Ben was a real cowboy, a true cowboy. I never
was a real cowboy
, though some folks think so. I considered
myself a horseman, having bred and raised horses all my life—
but there’s a difference. Sam Peckinpah was good but was his

own worst enemy. He brought things to life, but might have
brought things too close to life.
Like everyone else I have my favorite western movies,
those I enjoy seeing again and again. High Noon was a great
one. I also liked a film called Last of the Duanes with George
O’Brien. I knew George and was a big fan of his even as a kid.
He was a real decent man. Most guys never get to be friends
with their boyhood heroes. I was lucky
. I became
friendly with
two of my boyhood heroes. George and Hall of Fame baseball
player Dizzy Dean. Wells Fargo with Joel McCrea remains
another favorite. So does Shane, an absolutely great movie.
Over the years I have really come to appreciate Alan Ladd’s
work. What a pleasant, pleasant actor he was. He gave a mag-
n
ificent performance in Shane.
As for my own movies, I’d have to say the one I liked best
was a 1954 film, The Gambler from Natchez. It’s an exciting
story in which I play a young man who sets out to avenge the
murder of his father
, falsely accused of cheating at cards and
g
unned down by three men. Debra Paget was my love inter-
est in the film. She’s one of the sweetest people in the world
and a very good actress. Another leading lady I really liked
was Betty Grable. I played opposite her in the 1951 film, Call
Me Mister and the 1953 musical, The Farmer Takes a Wife. She
had a great sense of humor and was a true and sincere
person.

I don’
t believe that westerns are finished, even though
most of the new ones aren’t very good. What people have to
realize is that you must have a good story to make a good
western. A strong story must accompany the color and excite-
ment. The movie business follows trends; if someone does a
western and it makes lots of money, others will follow suit.
But again, the storyline must be there.
Looking back at a film and TV career that goes back more
than 50 years and includes more than 40 movies, two televi-
sion series, and numerous TV guest appearances, you always
wish you could have done some of your movies over and made
them better. But I have a great deal of pride having worked so
much in the western genre. People seem to remember so
much of what I did, and it’s a nice feeling. One thing I learned
early on is even if the stakes are low, never intentionally do a
bad job. You work your hardest to do your best work, no mat-
ter what. I was lucky enough to work with big-name stars
almost from the start. But I never felt intimidated in any way.
I was an officer during World War II, so I was used to dealing
with men of all stripes.
I am writing stories now and have written seven screen-
plays in the past three years. Recently, I have been Master of
Ceremonies at the annual Golden Boot Awards. It’s for a good
cause, the Motion Picture and Television Fund. I enjoy seeing
everybody, but we are losing so many people now, and that’s
very sad.
I wish the movies today had the same moral overtones that
ours had. The old westerns will always be there. However, I
believe the western film can make a comeback. The audience

is out there, and so is the interest. All we need are some good
stories and the right people to start making them again.
—Dale Robertson
xv
A multitude of thanks and appreciation to those who have
helped make this project possible.
To Tom Selleck and Dale Robertson, my gratitude for
providing the foreword and preface to this project. Your work
in the genre has been momentous, and your contributions to
our project so much appreciated.
To Gay Hovet, special projects manager for the Golden
Boot Awards, and Esme Chandlee, Tom Selleck’s publicity
associate, a million thanks for your help in arranging inter-
views with Mr. Selleck and Mr. Robertson.
To Gary Goldstein, who originally brought me into this
project, a hearty “Thank you.” More of the same to James
Chambers, editor-in-chief for arts and humanities at Facts On
File; my deep appreciation for your patience and guidance.
To my agent, Jake Elwell at Wieser and Wieser, the usual
kudos for continuing to represent my work with skill and
integrity. To my research assistant, Nette Ronnow, thanks for
your hard work and for meeting some tough deadlines.
To Jeff Schmedinghoff, thanks for your help in preparing
the Appendixes.
On a personal level, my continued appreciation to sports
agent John Wayslik for taking a chance on a fledgling, mid-
dle-aged writer and choosing me from among many prospec-
tive scribes to coauthor the autobiography of Windy City
baseball legend Minnie Minoso. You jump-started my career,
John.

To Sally, for enduring a full plate of western movies for
more than two years; thanks for the love and support. To my
mom, Gert Fagen, 90 years young, you are a true hero and the
unsung “wind beneath my wings.”
A special thanks to actress Sue Ane Langdon, writer/pro-
ducer Andrew J. Fenedy, actors Gregory Walcott and Edward
Faulkner, and the late Budd Boetticher (a dear friend) for pro-
viding personal photographs especially for this project.
Over the past few years I have had the good fortune of
knowing and interviewing many of those who were active par-
ticipants (actors, directors, stuntmen, etc.) in the world of
western filmmaking. So sadly, a growing number are no longer
with us. Where possible, I have inserted excerpts from past
interviews within the body of the text. To western filmmakers,
past and present, forever and always, “Lest We Forget.”
—Herb Fagen
Walnut Creek, California
Acknowledgments
xvii
The mystique and lure of the American West, so long a part
of our national lore and collective dreams, have been ele-
vated to an art form through the medium of film. Images
etched out against the big western sky have been part of
growing up in America for nearly a century now. Like jazz
and jive in the world of music, the western film is a distinct
American original.
In 1903 Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery became
the first recognizable western film and the blueprint for
countless others. Since then moviemakers have attempted to

depict the exploits, real or imaginary
, of the pioneers and
frontiersmen, the lawman and bandits, the heroes and hero-
ines of a sprawling and ever
-expanding American West.
The Great Train Robbery was a commercial success as well
as a cinematic milestone. Yet in the rash of films to follow, one
major ingredient was missing. W
estern audiences needed a
central figure to capture their attention—call him the western
star hero.
Introduction
Three pioneers: Cecil B. DeMille, D. W. Griffith, and Mack Sennett (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
He appeared in the stocky person of G. M. Anderson, an
actor soon to be known almost exclusively as Broncho Billy.
Courageous, rugged, amiable, and basically plain, he was the
prototype “good badman,” the type of hero who might will-
ingly sacrifice his cherished freedom to help a child in dis-
tress. Few of Broncho Billy Anderson’s 500 one- or
two-reelers survive today. Nevertheless they set the stage for
future cowboy heroes like William S. Hart, Tom Mix, and
Harry Carey.
The western hero might stray from the righteous path,
but he would somehow manage to saddle up on the side of the
angels before the final fadeout. Reticent and strong, tender
and charming, the western screen hero was more often than
not short on commitment and long on independence.
The western as a genre prospered in its formative years
because two of the most talented and adept early filmmakers
cut their directorial teeth on the genre: David Wark (D. W.)

Griffith and Thomas H. Ince. Before their arrival, and before
Griffith in particular began to develop a language of film and
lay the foundation of cinema as an art form, the western film
had developed little in the way of style or shape.
By 1911 the industry had churned out 43 western features,
with the number jumping to 99 features in 1915. Popularity
held steady, reaching a peak of 205 in 1925. New cowboy
heroes like Hoot Gibson, Tim McCoy, Ken Maynard, Buck
Jones, Fred Thompson, and the rugged and talented George
O’Brien became horse-opera stars in the silent era. Many
maintained their appeal into the 1930s, sharing the B-western
spotlight with the likes of Johnny Mack Brown, Bob Steele,
and an ex-USC football player by the name of John Wayne.
But by the late 1920s westerns were facing a dilemma.
Talkies meant big changes. With the advent of sound, for
example, the floundering between too much silent action and
too much static dialogue became a troubling concern. A major
breakthrough came in 1929 with Raoul Walsh’s In Old Ari-
zona. Because sound-recording equipment was stored in sta-
tionary, soundproof booths, the chase scene was dropped, and
one-third of the movie was shot indoors. Y
et by taking the
camera outdoors and by picking up gunshots, hoofbeats, and
even the natural noises of frying bacon, it became apparent
that the western film could more than cope with sound.
Based on “The Cisco Kid,” a story by O. Henry
, In Old
Arizona won a Best Actor Oscar for star Warner Baxter, whose
good looks and deep voice brought in lots of dollars and a
plethora of mail addressed to him at the Fox studio. Nomi-

nated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, today
it remains mainly a curiosity piece.
The next big western of the formative sound period—and
the most commercially successful—was Cimarron (1930–31).
Directed by Wesley Ruggles and produced by RKO Studio,
Cimarron won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture
of the Y
ear
, making for the evening’s biggest winner at the
awards ceremony. With the addition of music—particularly
traditional western folk tunes like those employed by direc-
tors such as John Ford—the western’s shaky journey into the
world of talkies was now complete.
Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) finally lifted the western from the
B genre and into the front rank of American cinema, making
a major star out of 32-year-old John Wayne, who had been
languishing in the “poverty row” of budget westerns since fiz
-
zling in The Big T
rail nine years earlier in 1930. As the Ringo
Kid, Wayne’
s entrance is simply stunning—a visual treat. The
sky, the desert, and the picturesque buttes of Monument Val-
ley create a classic western landscape. The background is bril-
liant as the camera focuses perfectly against Wayne’s
sweat-filled face. Instantly, an image is born. Ringo’s world,
like the film itself, is black and white, his parameters firm, his
boundaries clearly defined: “There are some things a man
can’t run away from.”
With Stagecoach, the “Golden Age” of the western film

had arrived. During the 1940s, the 1950s, even into the 1960s,
the movie industry’
s most popular and appealing stars rode
the Western Range. John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Randolph
Scott, Joel McCrea, and James Stewart became major players
on the western scene. As Michael Parkinson and Clyde Jeav-
ons note in their incisive Pictorial History of W
ester
ns (1972),
these five, along with predecessors Broncho Billy Anderson,
William S. Hart, and Tom Mix rank among the handful of
western stars who either worked exclusively in the genre or
made their biggest contribution to the cinema in the “West-
ern’s broad confines.” Add today the name of Clint Eastwood,
and that venerated list is now complete.
Since the late 1930s, many big stars who have achieved
fame in a variety of roles have also embraced the western with
some regularity and a notable degree of success. Henry
Fonda, Glenn Ford, Richard Widmark, and Alan Ladd imme-
diately come to mind. So do Errol Flynn, Clark Gable,
William Holden, Gregory Peck, Robert Taylor, Charlton
Heston, James Garner, John Payne, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lan-
caster, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, Jack Palance, Ronald
Reagan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, and many others.
Even James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Marlon
Brando have graced the western screen with their inimitable
flair. B-western heroes Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and, to a
lesser degree, William Boyd as Hop-Along Cassidy became
household names and living legends. Actors George Mont-
gomery, Dale Robertson, Audie Murphy, and Charles Bron-

son found a home and enduring fame in western movies. In
1971 veteran actor and former World Rodeo champion Ben
Johnson became the first authentic cowboy to win an Acad-
emy Award for his splendid work in The Last Picture Show.
Too often overlooked are the great character actors who
supplied a multitude of supporting perfor
mances that
gave
fine films their very foundation: Walter Brennan, Victor
McLaglen, Ward Bond, Harry Carey Jr., Charles Bickford,
Richard Boone, Andy Devine, Arthur Kennedy, Jack Elam,
Pedro Armendáriz, George “Gabby” Hayes, Tim Holt, John
Ireland, Brian Keith, Royal Dano, John Mitchum, Edward
Faulkner, Gregory Walcott, Warren Oates, Lee Van Cleef,
Arthur Hunnicutt, Dan Duryea, and others.
Not lost are contributions to silver screen westerns by a
handful of “Golden Age” leading ladies: Barbara Stanwyck,
Jean Arthur, Veronica Lake, Claire Trevor, Jennifer Jones,
Joan Crawford, Jane Russell, Linda Darnell, Angie Dickin-
son, Maureen O’Hara, Vera Miles, and Katharine Ross have
contributed quality work in a male-dominated genre.
No director could carve a western landscape like John
Ford. With the deftness of a Remington, he could capture the
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WESTERNS
xviii
snow-topped Sierras, the wailing winds of Monument Valley,
nearly every feature of the sprawling western land, expansive
and beautiful. Still, as the unmatched poet and romanticist of
the cinematic West, Ford’s record four Academy Awards do
not include a single western film.

But Ford was not alone in helming outstanding westerns
during Hollywood’s so-called golden years. Howard Hawks,
William Wellman, King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, Henry King,
Henry Hathaway, Anthony Mann, and Budd Boetticher each
contributed brilliantly to the genre. To a lesser degree so did
Fritz Lange, Delmer Daves, Michael Curtiz, John Sturges,
George Miller, Lesley Selander, and George Sherman. And
while George Stevens, Fred Zinnemann, and William Wyler
are not recognized as genre masters per se, their masterworks
Shane, High Noon, and even Wyler’s The Westerner are superb
motion pictures and among the best westerns ever filmed.
In the post war era, westerns began taking on controver-
sial themes. W
illiam W
ellman’s The Ox Bow Incident (1943),
John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1944), Raoul Walsh’s Pur-
sued (1947), André De T
oth’s Ramrod (1947), Howard Hawks’s
Red River (1948), Alfred Greene’s Four Faces West (1948),
Delmer Daves’s Broken Arrow (1950), Henry King’
s The Gun-
fighter (1950), Anthony Mann’s The Furies (1950), Zinne-
mann’s High Noon (1952), Stevens’
s Shane (1953), Ford’s The
Searchers (1956), Budd Boetticher’s Seven Men From Now
(1957), Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns (1957), and Sam Peckin-
pah’
s Ride the High Countr
y constitute just a few examples of
rich and intelligent filmmaking.

With the changing political and social currents of the
1960s, wester
ns entered a state of flux. It took 143 films and a
career dating back to 1929 for John Wayne to earn a long-
awaited Oscar for his work in Henry Hathaway’s True Grit.
The American Indian was given a wide share of dignity and
respect in Ford’
s Cheyenne Autumn and in Arthur Penn’
s Little
Big Man (1970).
The tough lonely life of the cattle drover was realistically
captured in Tom Gries’
s Will Penny, with Charlton Heston
reaching his finest film hour in the title role. The bad guys
were made into heroes in The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peck-
inpah’
s magnificent, moving, and impeccably violent ode to a
dying W
est. The combination of action and patter reached its
peak that same year with George Roy Hill’s irresistible Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
On a less positive note, the traditional western had been
usurped by a different product. These “revisionist” westerns
purported to show the Old W
est not as we had idealized but
as it “really was.” Y
et many of these new westerns were as
highly exaggerated and often more historically flawed than
the films they supposedly were replacing. This new realism
tended to depict the Old West as dirty, mean-spirited, dan-

gerous, crass, and largely ignoble. The spaghetti westerns (see
Appendix I) that enjoyed such enormous popularity from the
mid-1960s to the early ’70s initiated this viewpoint.
By the 1970s, foul language, graphic violence, and uncov-
ered parts of the human torso began to flash across the west-
ern screen as never before, although Howard Hughes’s The
Outlaw [1943] and King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun [1946] had
pushed the steamy envelope to new limits two decades earlier
.
With the waning of the W
estern film in this decade and the
demise of the studio system that helped create it, the genre
began to be viewed as obsolete. More and more westerns had
become the special fodder for revisionist critics and filmmak-
ers and CEOs in business suits.
What was best in the genre had gone from the big screen
to the small, with the production of inspired miniseries and
movies such as Robert Totten’s The Sacketts (1979) and
Andrew McLaglen’
s T
he Shadow Riders (1982). Both produc-
tions were based on stories by Louis L’Amour and helped to
advance the names of two young actors destined to preserve
the western ethos: T
om Selleck and Sam Elliott.
In 1989, Larry McMurtry’s sprawling novel Lonesome Dove
was made into superb miniseries starring T
ommy Lee Jones
and Robert Duvall. Directed by Simon W
incer and with best-

of-career performances by Jones and Duvall, it ranks among
the best westerns ever produced. The television trend has
continued to the present day with two outstanding TNT
(Turner Network Television) productions: Last Stand at Saber
Ridge (1997) and the enormously successful Crossfir
e Trail
(2001), both features produced by and star
ring Tom Selleck.
Could the western film make a comeback? A few people
thought so, not least a couple of actors named Kevin Costner
and Clint Eastwood.
In 1990, Dances with Wolves became the first western to
win an Academy A
war
d for Best Picture since Cimarron in
1930, with Costner becoming the first director to garner an
Oscar for helming a western. Moreover, the film revitalized
the western’
s financial viability. Two years later Clint East-
wood scored big with Unforgiven, called by Time’s movie critic
Richard Corliss “a dark passionate drama with good guys so
twisted and bad guys so persuasive that virtue and villainy
become two views of the same soul.” The Los Angeles Daily
News’ Bob Strauss characterized Unforgiven as “a ruthlessly
uncompromising western, an unflinching autopsy of East-
wood’s screen persona, our frontier legends, and the legacy
history bequeathes.” Called by some “an old man’
s
movie,”
three of the four leads in Unforgiven were in their 60s, and the

other 55, a fact that speaks volumes.
Clint Eastwood may well be the last genre classicist in
American film, most certainly the western film. Unforgiven
won four Oscars: Best Picture; Best Supporting Actor (Gene
Hackman); Best Film Editing (Joel Cox); and Best Director
(Eastwood). T
wenty-three years after handing an Oscar to
John W
ayne, Barbara Streisand handed a similar gold stat-
uette to another western screen icon. Andrew Sarris remarked
of Eastwood in The New Observer, “Now at age sixty-two, he
joyously joins the gallery of the sunset horsemen previously
incarnated in the twilight westerns of John W
ayne, Joel
McCrea, Randolph Scott, and Gary Cooper
, among other
grizzled greats.”
It was a fitting epitaph to a century of westerns.
Our purpose in producing Facts On File’s Encyclopedia of
W
ester
ns is to present the most comprehensive and annotated
volume of westerns available to the public. Entries appear
alphabetically, and annotations vary fr
om credits only to one or
two lines to three or four pages, depending on available data
and the significance of the entry. They may incorporate a syn-
opsis, reviews, sidebars, musical critiques, or statements by
filmmakers and performers (many from original interviews with
INTRODUCTION

xix
the author). Unlike many film almanacs and directories, there
is no overall rating of the entries, but from time to time the
author’s opinions do surface.
With a project so comprehensive, certain constraints were
necessary. The entries are comprised mainly of western films
of the sound era. Landmark films from the silent era, such as
Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery, James Cruze’s The
Cover
ed W
agon, and John Ford’s T
he Iron Horse are fully cov-
ered as individual entries. So are such William S. Hart fea-
tures as Hell’s Hinges and Tumbleweeds as well as such Tom Mix
vehicles as The Great K & A Train Robbery and Just Tony.
We inserted serials selectively because our original plan
was to limit our entries to feature films. W
e employed the
same criteria for western movies made explicitly for televi-
sion. Granted, these are arbitrary decisions.
Because of the sheer numbers, the B westerns present a
par
ticular problem. In 1935, for example, more than 150 titles
were either produced or released. While such films often
overlooked in serious studies of the genre, many have real
style and an ability to tackle social issues such as racial dis-
crimination which the A westerns tended to avoid throughout
much of the 1930s and 1940s.
To be as inclusive as possible, we employed Master
Entries, a few examples of which follow:

• Roy Rogers made more than 90 films for Republic
between 1938 and 1952. Some entries are fully anno-
tated with a synopsis and ancillary data. Others include
only the credits with a reference to the Master Entry
which details all the films in the series with some
explanatory comments. Not all films in all series are
included.
• Johnny Mack Brown’s considerable volume of work
includes series features he made for different studios.
Consequently, a separate Master Entry will be listed for
the appropriate series studio.
• If the entry is part of a series where different actors
played the same role, the Master Entry will involve the
series—not the actor. Thus any Red Ryder entry not
given a full annotation and synopsis will be listed in the
master entry.
While purists might disagree, we included films with
western themes from the modern era: Hence the likes of Hud,
Junior Bonner
, and J.W
. Coop receive full treatment. So were
musicals with a decidedly western bent: Annie Get Your Gun,
Oklahoma!, Rose Marie, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, for
example.
At the same time, a few films were not included that some
might expect: John Huston’
s brilliant The T
reasure of the Sierra
Madre. The reason is that it crosses genre lines, and a work of
such merit deserves greater attention than this volume can

a
llow. Nor have I included Geor
ge Stevens’s highly praised
Giant (1956). For Stevens, Shane was his western film vision,
whereas Giant was made as the final installment in a trilogy of
1950s films as a testimony to the American experience, the
other two being A Place in the Sun (1951) and Shane (1953).
T
o further aid the reader
, we have included separate
appendixes for the spaghetti westerns, Academy Awards nom-
inations and winners in the genre, and literary sources. Also,
we have listed all films not cited as entries in the body of the
work by year in two separate appendixes, one for sound films
and one for silent films.
As a city kid from Chicago, I fell in love with the Ameri-
can West at a very early age. I watched western movies in an
assortment of theaters and movies palaces on Chicago’s North
Side and in downtown Chicago where the Chicago Theater,
the Oriental Theater, and the State and Lake ruled supreme.
I was awed by an incredibly handsome Alan Ladd in Shane and
moved by the tears and pathos of an adoring young boy in the
film’s closing scene, one of the most haunting and memorable
in the history of American cinema.
I saw Gary Cooper reach his finest hour as the courageous
W
ill Kane in High Noon, and I whistled the haunting theme
music for months. My childhood images of John Wayne
remain: in She W
ore a Yellow Ribbon, he reluctantly reaches for

a pair of glasses, then wiping an errant tear from his eye, reads
the touching inscription inside the silver watch bestowed to
Captain Nathan Brittles by his troops—“Lest W
e Forget.”
Nor should we. The western film is an American original,
a cultural treasure, a true cinematic art form. It has seen us
through changing times and shifting trends. It has comforted
us, entertained us, and at times shocked us. But it has never
left us. I am proud and honored to have been asked to help
keep this marvelous legacy alive.
—Herb Fagen
Walnut Creek, California
June 2002
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WESTERNS
xx
Entries A to Z
ABILENE TOWN United Artists, 1946, B&W, 89
min, VT. Producers: Herbert B. Biberman and Jules Levy;
Director: Edwin L. Marin; Screenplay: Harold Shumate;
Music: Gerard Carbonara, Albert Glasser, Kermit Goell
(songs), Charles Koff, James Mayfield, Fr
ed Speilman
(songs), and Max T
eer; Cinematographer: Archie Stout (as
Archie J. Stout); Editor: Richard V
. Heermance; Cast: Ran-
dolph Scott, Ann Dvorak, Edgar Buchanan, Rhonda Flem-
ing, Lloyd Bridges, Helen Boyce, Howard Fr
eeman, Richard

Hale, Jack Lambert, Dick Curtis.
In this film set in the post-Civil W
ar West, a patient marshal
(Randolph Scott) tries to stop homesteader conflicts. Cattle-
men and homesteaders are at loggerheads in this fast-paced
shoot-em-up western that focuses on the evolution of this
Kansas village from an unstable and violent cowboy town
into a peaceful frontier community.
Within a historical perspective, Abilene is located where
the Chisholm Trail ends and where cattle were put on trains
for the packinghouse cities. At the time, businessmen felt
that without the cattle business, the town would die. The cat-
tlemen-versus-homesteader conflicts provide a recurring
theme in scores of western films.
Randolph Scott is at his stoic best as the taciturn marshal
who cleans up the town and manages to tame salty saloon
singer Ann Dvorak along the way. Rhonda Fleming and
Lloyd Bridges provide appealing second leads, and Jack
Lambert makes a believable heavy, but it is veteran character
actor Edgar Buchanan who steals the show as Sheriff Bravo
Trimble. Based on Ernest Haycox’s 1946 novel Trail T
own,
the film features such Kermit Goell/ Fred Speilman songs as
“Everytime I Give My Heart,” “I Love Out Here in the
West” and “All Y
ou Gotta Do,” spelled with frequent strains
of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” This above-average
treatment of a familiar western theme still makes for an
entertaining and enjoyable viewing experience.
ABILENE TRAIL Monogram, 1951, B&W, 54 min.

Producer: Vincent M. Fennelly; Director: Lewis D.
Collins; Screenplay: Harry L. Fraser; Cinematographer:
Gilbert Warrenton; Editor: Richard V. Heermance; Cast:
Whip Wilson, Andy Clyde, Noel Neill, Steve Clark, Mar-
shall Reed, Dennis Moore, Lee Roberts, Tommy Farrell, Ted
Adams, Milburne Morante, L
yle T
albot, Bill Kennedy.
Two suspected horse thieves come to the aid of a young
rancher who is having trouble driving his herd to market in
this solid Monogram B western series piece with Whip Wil-
son as Dave “Kansas Kid” Hill and Andy Clyde as “Sage-
brush Charlie.” Wilson was a feature series player on the
Monogram schedules in the 1940s and early 1950s. Although
the B western was in decline by the early 1950s, this Whip
Wilson vehicle is quite well done. This Monogram feature is
the only film where he plays “The Kansas City Kid.” Most of
his 26 feature films had him playing a character named Whip
Wilson or “Whip” because of his skills with that implement.
Wilson’s films include God’s Country (1946); Silver Trails
(1948); Crashing Thru, Haunted Trails, Riders of the Dusk,
Shadows of the West, Range Land (1949); Fence Riders, Gun-
slingers, Arizona T
erritor
y, Cherokee Uprising, Outlaws of Texas,
Silver Raiders (1950); Canyon Raiders, Nevada Badmen, Lawless
Cowboys, W
anted: Dead or Alive, Stagecoach Driver
, Stage to Blue
River (1951); Night Raiders, The Gunman, aka Mr. Hobo, Mon-

tana Incident aka Gunsmoke Range, Wyoming Roundup (1952).
ACE HIGH (QUATTRO DEL AVE MARIA) Para-
mount, 1969, Color, 132 min. Producers: Bino Cicogna and
Giuseppe Colizzi; Director: Colizzi; Screenplay: Colizzi;
Music: Carlo Rustichelli; Cinematographer: Marcello
Masciocchi; Editor: Marcello Malvestiti; Cast: Terence Hill,
Bud Spencer
, Eli W
allach, Kevin McCarthy, Steffan
Zacharias, Livio Lorenzo, Tiffany Hoyveld.
1
A

An outlaw who is sentenced to hang is offered a chance to
save his life. This better-than-average Giuseppi Colizzi west-
ern comedy offers an enjoyable musical score, some beautiful
photography, and the usual violent touches. Terence Hill
plays Cat Stevens (not to be confused with the former rock
star), and Eli Wallach and Kevin McCarthy deliver their
usual competent performances. In Great Britain the film was
issued as Revenge of El Paso. (See also Appendix I, Spaghetti
Westerns A–Z.)
ACES AND EIGHTS Puritan Pictures, 1936, B&W,
62 min. Producers: Sam Katzman, Sigmond Neufeld, and
Leslie Simmons; Director: Sam Newfield; Screenplay:
George Arthur Durlam; Cinematographer: Jack Green-
halgh; Cast: Tim McCoy, Luanna Walters, Rex Lease,
Wheeler Oakman, J. Frank Glendon.
T
im McCoy plays an infamous cardsharp who comes to the

aid of a Mexican family unfairly accused of murder
. There’s
not much action here, but the story is well told and pleasant,
and McCoy gives a fine performance as a gambler. A colonel
in the U.S. Army and an authority on Indian lore, the digni-
fied McCoy achieved a reputation as a more serious actor
than did most of his counterparts in the B western arena. (See
also
MAN FROM GUNTOWN
.)
ACE’S WILD Commodore, 1936, B&W, 57 min. Pro-
ducer: William Berke; Director: Harry L. Fraser; Screen-
play: Monro Talbot; Cinematographer: Robert E. Kline;
Editor: Arthur A. Brooks; Cast: Harry Carey, Gertrude
Messinger
, Fr
ed “Snowflake” Toones, Ed Cassidy, Phil Dun-
ham, Chuck Morrison.
A newspaper editor is threatened by outlaws when he tries to
stop their activities in this low-budget film with an excellent
performance by Harry Carey.
ACROSS THE BADLANDS Columbia, 1950, B&W,
55 min. Producer: Colbert Carr; Director: Fred F. Sears;
Screenplay: Barry Shipman; Cinematographer: Fayte M.
Browne; Editor: Paul Borofsky; Cast: Charles Starrett, Smi-
ley Burnette, Stanley Andrews, Harmonica Bill, Jock (O)
Mahoney
.
The Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) and sidekick Smiley
Burnette are called in by the general manager of a railroad

company to expose a gang that is making attacks on a band of
surveyors laying a new railway line. Aided by Barry Ship-
man’
s fine script and Fred S. Sears’s steady direction, this
action-packed film is one of Starrett’s best series entries.
Starrett starred in 60 Durango Kid features beginning with
THE DURANGO KID
in 1940.
ACROSS THE BORDER (aka: LONE RIDER
CROSSES THE RIO, THE)
Producers Releasing
Corporation, 1941, B&W, 63 min. Producer: Sigmond
Neufeld; Director: Sam Newfield; Screenplay: William
Lively; Music: Johnny Lange and Lew Porter; Cinematog-
rapher: Jack Greenhalgh; Editor: Holbrook N. Todd; Cast:
George Houston, Al St. John, Roquell Verria, Julian Rivero.
While hiding from outlaws in Mexico, T
om Camer
on (aka
The Lone Rider, played by George Houston) and Fuzzy
Jones (Al St. John) help a Mexican official’s son fake his kid-
napping. The boy’s father disapproves of his affair with a
cabaret singer. But when the boy is kidnapped for real, Tom
and Fuzzy get blamed. They end up solving the “kidnapping”
in this somewhat different entry in the Lone Rider series.
Houston played Tom Cameron (The Lone Rider) in 10
films for Producers Releasing Corporation from 1941 until
his death in 1944 at age 46, when he was succeeded by
Robert Livingston as Rocky Cameron/The Lone Rider. (See
also

LONE RIDER AMBUSHED
,
THE
.)
ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE Pacific Interna-
tional, 1977, Color, 101 min. Producer: Arthur R. Dubs;
Director: Stewart Rafill; Screenplay: Rafill; Music: Gene
Kauer and Douglas M. Lackey; Cinematographer: Gerard
Alcan; Editors: R. Hansel Brown and Frank C. Decot; Cast:
Robert Logan, Heather Rattray
, Mark Edward Hall, Geor
ge
“Buck” Flower, Hal Bokar.
In 1876 a vagabond con man and two orphans, intent on
traveling west to Oregon, brave the harsh elements so the
youngsters can claim inherited land. Praise from viewers is
surprisingly high—much higher than critical reviews. Lots of
pretty scenery and a plentiful display of animals offer the
film’s most appealing highlights.
ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE Monogram, 1949,
B&W, 56 min. Producer: Louis Gray; Director: Oliver
Drake; Screenplay: Ronald Davidson; Cinematographer:
Harry Neumann; Editor: John C. Fuller; Cast: Jimmy
W
akely
, Dub Taylor, Myron Healey, Polly Bergen.
Jimmy Wakely helps straighten out a young lawyer who is
involved with border ore smugglers. In the process he cap-
tures the killer of the lawyer’s father. This excellent Jimmy
Wakely film marks the first screen appearance by

actress/singer Polly Bergen, who plays a cantina singer. Usu-
ally garbed in Gene Autry-like attire, Jimmy Wakely was a
Monogram musical mainstay in the 1940s. He appeared in
the 1940 film
TEXAS TERROR
(with his group Jimmy Wakely
& His Rough Riders) starring Don “Red” Barry,
THE TULSA
KID
(1940), and
SAGA OF DEATH VALLEY
(1939) with Roy
Rogers and Don “Red” Barry. He went on to work with
many of the big B western stars in the early to mid-1940s.
Wakely appeared as an uncredited singer in Come On
Danger with Tim Holt (1942); with Johnny Mack Brown in
Pony Post (1940); Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie (1941); Deep
in the Heart of T
exas, Little Joe, the W
rangler (1942); Cheyenne
Roundup, Lone Star Trail, The Old Chisholm T
rail, Raiders of San
Joaquin, Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground (1943); The
Marshal’s Daughter
, (1953); and with Charles Starrett in Robin
Hood of the Range, Cowboy in the Clouds (1943); Sundown Valley,
Sagebrush Heroes, Cyclone Prairie Rangers, Saddle Leather Law
,
Cowboy Canteen, Cowboy from Lonesome River (1944).
ACES AND EIGHTS

2