. . Rex rides again . . Another of the six Westerns starring Rex Bell that Colony Pictures put out in 1936 was Law and

. . Huge fun . . Of all the seriously corny low-budget programmer Westerns of the 1930s, and there were oh, so many, I must

. . Worth seeing . . Embassy Pictures was an independent film maker that had some big hits with non-Westerns The Lion in Winter, The

. . The other autobiography . . When in Cheyenne Jail, on what we would these days call Death Row, Tom Horn (1860 – 1903)

. . Alright, I guess . . Bounty is probably one of those straight-to-video productions. Although movies are never a one man show, as this

. . Fighting Caravans redux . . Paramount released a series of movies in the early 1930s adapted from Zane Grey stories, to which Jesse

. . Early Budd Boetticher . . In 1950 Audie Murphy signed with Universal for seven years. He made three Westerns in 1950 (The Kid

. . A whoop-de-woo Randolph Scott oater . . 1948 was a stellar year for Westerns but while the attention was on mighty examples of

. . Entertaining . . There are so many hard-core Maverickistas out there that I hardly need to tell you that Maverick was a TV

. . Arthur Hunnicutt, Jim Davis and Leo Gordon – so you can’t knock it too much . . Made-for-TV Western films in the 1970s

. . Neither boring nor disagreeable . . Another in the long series of color Westerns Audie Murphy starred in for Universal, Column South was

. . For old timers . . The 1969 TV movie The Over the Hill Gang had wheeled out a batch of old-timers for a

. . Melodramatic hokum . . The Mescalero-Chiricahua spiritual and war chief Goyaałé, known to history as Geronimo, has appeared in many Hollywood movies and

. . An enjoyable read . . Henry Wilson Allen (1912 – 1991) wrote under the name Clay Fisher (more fictional action-Westerns) and Will Henry

. . A minor Western but it has Ben Johnson in it . . War Drums is not the greatest A-Western of the late 50s

. . Fun . . Cecil B DeMille made bad Westerns. There’s a good generalization for you. But like most generalizations, it has its basis

. . Syrup . . Poor Brandon de Wilde. He was the whiny kid in Shane  in 1953, aged 10, much lauded but I thought miscast,

. Al Sieber, Chief of Scouts . .One of the greatest (though usually unsung) heroes of the West, the man who, more than any other

. . American spaghetti . . Another Western which (presumably) ought to have had a comma in its title, this was Joel McCrea’s penultimate oater.

. . Unintentionally funny . . Only by a great stretch of the Western buff’s imagination a Western at all, Salome Where She Danced, the

. . Mexican pot-boiler . . Once the Mexican-American War was over and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo signed in 1848, one might have imagined that

. . Nice little Western . . Joel McCrea loved being a cowboy. He was in 35 Western features and in 26 episodes of Wichita

. . Routine early 50s oater . . Like many Universal Westerns of the 1950s, Apache Drums was no ultra-low budget programmer. These movies had

. . The Civil War comes to Vermont . . Van Heflin was in thirteen Western or semi-Western movies and a few TV shows. He

. . A fine Western noir . . Rawhide is a much underrated but absolutely excellent Western.   Given that Tyrone Power had been such

. . aka Trinità e Sartana figli di… . . This is a ‘comedy’ spaghetti western in which Trinity (so named because he comes from

. . Early spaghetti . . This was a relatively early spaghetti western, from a time when at least some production values were required and

. . Interminable . . This picture is also known as I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns for a Coffin, or Sartana’s Coming, Get Your

. . ‘ip, ‘ip, Ouray  . . These drums were to be heard not, like John Ford’s along the Mohawk but across the river. Westerns

. . It’ll make you chuckle here and there, but… . . There is a kind of plot. As with most comedy Westerns, there is

. . Lovey-dovey kept to a minimum . . This is a juvenile singin’ cowboy Western for wartime audiences. It stars Tex Ritter, who had

. . Lovely Rita . . Another formulaic Tex Ritter picture, one of many he made for Grand National in the 30s before he moved

. . A Tombstone drama . . I am afraid this one is a bit of a Tex Turkey. Tex Ritter churned out dozens of

. . Japanese Western . . I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, “The Last Samurai isn’t a Western. What’s it

. . Longmire 2 . . Death Without Company (Viking Penguin, 2006), which was named the Wyoming Historical Association’s Book of the Year, is the

  A bit of a plodder   MGM rather missed the boat (or the stagecoach anyway) in 1939 when the big-budget adult Western suddenly became

. . For dyed-in-the-wool Johnny fans only . . Boot Hill Brigade (or Boothill Brigade), which has nothing to do with Boot Hill, is a

  I write the review below of a new Western novel in French with apologies to my readers in the non-francophone world but I’ll be

. . DW Griffith and Christy Cabanne do the Alamo . . An early silent feature film made about the defense of the Alamo, this

. . Frank Ferguson, Western character actor (1899  – 1978) . . Good old Frank Ferguson. Many people will see that craggy, familiar face and

. . Slim loads a Winchester at full gallop . . I really like The Outcast. It’s an unpretentious Republic Western with weaknesses, yes, but

. . Dashing Errol . . This Western is fun in a 1945 kind of way. It was produced by Robert Buckner, who wrote Errol

. . Cannibal, pervert, gambler, scalper . . This film has any number of titles, To Kill or To Die, The Dragon Strikes Back and

. . An overwrought play . . When I first saw this movie I wrote in my notes, “A rather boring black & white stage

. . The stars are Jane’s legs, Trigger, and Bob’s car . . Four years after The Paleface, Bob Hope returns as Junior, the son of

. . Rhubarb and Custer . . Le Général Custer, une légende américaine was an Insignia Productions documentary for the American Experience series. It was

. . Watchable, but… . . Wartime, and Paramount made a big black & white Western called American Empire with loads of shooting and riding,

. . It has quite a few strong points . . A 78-minute oater trying to be an A-picture, this Technicolor Western, no relation to

. . One of the great movies of the 1950s . . I wasn’t sure whether to include this film in this blog. Most guides

. . The greatest cowboy of the silver screen . . On the afternoon of October 12, 1940, a 1937 Cord 812 Phaeton, one of

. . Tom is rather stern . . It was inevitable, once Zane Grey’s 1912 novel Riders of the Purple Sage had become so enormously

(Reissued as Single-Shot Parker, 1923) . . Excellent example of early Mix Western . . Tom Mix made a great number of one- and two-reelers

  aka Joe, cercati un posto per morire!, Ringo cherche une place pour mourir, Ringo, Such Dir einen Platz zum Sterben, etc. ad nauseam .

. . No Gabby but fun all the same . . The Desert Trail is in many ways a Western programmer typical of the films

. . A cut above the usual Duke B-Westerns of the 30s . . While Born to the West is in many ways just another

. . Classic 1930s Wayne . . RN Bradbury directs a one-hour black & white Western photographed by Archie Stout in which the hero, John,

  Sometimes known as ‘Neath Arizona Skies, which I somehow find more musical . . In the 1930s, John Wayne, in his slightly less than