Enjoyable   I enjoy the writing of Johnny D Boggs. He’s especially good on comparing and contrasting fact with fiction in the West, a

  Not Raoul’s or Kirk’s greatest Western but still worth a look   In the 1940s Raoul Walsh moved from the big dashing oaters such

  Cranky old-timer – even when young   Many Western fans will think first of Walter Brennan in his parts as cantankerous old-timer sidekick of

  A Joe Kane meller of the late 40s   Brimstone was a late-40s Republic Western produced and directed by Joseph Kane, and as such

  Good-looking Western which needed a slightly stronger cast   Stage to Tucson, known in some markets as Lost Stage Valley, was a nice color

  Pretty good   This six-episode series is for the moment available on Amazon (though only in the US) and has just finished on BBC

  A B-Western with some quality   The Long Rope is really a B-Western: a one-hour black & white program-filler, cheaply made. But it has

  “There’s still money to be made in the sticks.” (Robert Lippert)   Titles with livelinks have been reviewed on this blog and you can

  Lippert does a deal with Fox   Movies whose titles have livelinks have been reviewed on this blog and you can click to read

  Not bad   Frontier Gun was another of those black & white (but widescreen) Westerns which Regal Films made for Fox. It’s OK.  

  A rather typical Regal B   Escape from Red Rock was the tenth of the Westerns Robert L Lippert of Regal Films made for

  Hawkeye rides, I mean walks, again   Not all Western-fans like eighteenth-century tales of swords and single-shot muskets, or even think of them as

  Not at all bad   The Black Whip was one of those mid-1950s Westerns that Regal Pictures produced for 20th Century Fox, after a

  Another Lippert B   Deputy Marshal was another in the series of late-1940s/early 50s low-budget Lippert Westerns that we’ve been reviewing lately – the

  The Daltons, I mean Dentons, ride again   Three Desperate Men, on one level just another modest black & white B-Western produced by the

  Roll ‘em Sholem   Lee Tabor Sholem (1913 – 2000) was one of the characters of Hollywood. Born in Paris (but before we get

  Already formulaic   Gene Autry first appeared in a couple of Westerns at Mascot in 1934, Ken Maynard pictures. Mascot boss Nat Levine was

  A ripping yarn   In an introduction, Scott McCrea tells us that Tom Mix had many adventures, and “this might have been one of

  Difficult to say which is worse, the writing or the acting   Robert L Lippert had no interest in his father’s hardware store. He

  Harry Joe   The second in Jeff Arnold’s West’s smash-hit series (not really) on the producers of Western movies, after Harry Sherman (click the

  Pop   It’s good to start our series on the producers of Westerns (click here for our intro essay) with Pop Sherman because he

  $ and ₵   On this blog over the years we’ve done overviews of the Westerns of a good many players, both leads and

  Republic’s biggest picture to date   In the blurb on the DVD of Dark Command, some text tells us: “The 1939 John Ford classic

  Forget the Black Lagoon   Julie Adams once said, “No matter what you do, you can act your heart out, but people will always

  “The World’s Greatest Western Star”   Although it is not easy to do a career summary of a Western actor only one of whose

  Ginny   Raoul Walsh called her his favorite actress. “She didn’t pose, you know. She was a natural.”   Anyone who watches Mayo as

  Tom Mix rides again   We reviewed the entertaining Western novel Mountain Killer not so long ago (click the link for that), which was

  Yawn   Last time we looked at a 1949 Don ‘Red’ Barry B-Western, The Dalton Gang, in which Don tracked down the famed, if

  Red tracks down the Daltons   The Daltons were, in the scale of things, pretty minor outlaws. They were four brothers who drifted into

  Red is Billy   We were recently talking about Billy the Kid, and how B-Westerns portrayed him. We have also lately discussed Don ‘Red’

  You have to be a serious Western addict to watch it   Donald Barry had his moment of Western fame when he starred as

  No sign of a banjo on anyone’s knee     Oh! Susanna is a color Republic cavalry Western directed by old hand Joe Kane

  I’ll come back to our Billy the Kid thread (I always do) but today it’s off down a side-trail.   Guère captivant   Renegades

  Bob as Billy   We were talking last time about how the Billy the Kid myth, elevated (or resurrected) by the sensational Walter Noble

  B-Western Billy   To continue our current Billy the Kid thread, we have looked at two big pictures from MGM, in 1930 and 1941,

  Billy rides again   After the commercial flop (and artistic so-so quality) of Billy the Kid in 1930, which we reviewed last time, so

  The first talkie Billy     There was a flurry of interest in the career of William Bonney (let’s call him that for the

  Ho-hum, but at least it highlights Bass Reeves   In the 2010 TV show Justified, Marshal Art Mullen (Nick Searcy), who has a Tombstone

  Solid heavy     Barton MacLane may be best known as the police lieutenant in The Maltese Falcon, or as a star of I

  An entertaining yarn   Mountain Killer is the first in a projected series of Western novels, Tales of Tom Mix, featuring everyone’s favorite silent

  Little Joe – but not only   Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts and Dan Blocker, whose careers we have recently been looking at on this

  Hoss   Next stop on our current Bonanzarama is Hoss. Like all the lead actors on the show, Dan Blocker is almost entirely identified

  Adam Cartwright     Since we are on a Bonanza-binge at the moment, and have examined under the microscope the career of Lorne Greene

  Pa     Lyon Chaim Green, better known to Westernistas, especially Bonanza fans, as Lorne Greene, was pretty Canadian. There were quite a few

  Vin   Steve McQueen is often thought of as a Western actor and was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers in April

  The Lone Ranger rides again – in 1938   Francis Hamilton Striker (1903 – 1962), known to one and all as Fran, deserves glory,

  A formulaic Mohicans-style ‘Western’     Eighteenth-century tales of conflict with Indians are in many ways not really Westerns at all, or not as

  An entertaining yarn   Clifford Irving (1930 – 2017) became especially famous in the early 1970s when he was about to publish a life

  Mediocre   Nevada Smith was a Joseph Levine production for Embassy (director Henry Hathaway and star Steve McQueen also got producer credits) and was

  Casting pearls   Yesterday we put together our Hollywood project for a great Western – click here for that. It’s going to be written

  Jeff’s ideal Western     When I was writing about smoothie bad guy Lyle Bettger the other day, I concluded by saying that I

  Best as crooked saloon man in a frock coat   We were talking the other day about Western blond badman David Brian and how

  Not riveting     The White Squaw was another Western produced by Wallace MacDonald. MacDonald started as an actor and had first appeared in

  Solid, but…     Producer partners Howard W Koch and Aubrey Schenck worked together on 35 feature films, starting with the Anthony Mann-directed noir

  Vin ordinaire   Gunfire at Indian Gap was a Western made in Republic’s widescreen process Naturama, introduced in 1956, which the studio hoped would

  RG   Robert Golden Armstrong, usually known by his initials, was at his best in our genre as a violent character. He once said,

  Monogram goes upmarket   Walter Mirisch and his brothers became hotshot Hollywood producers in the 1960s. The Mirisch Company won the Academy Award for

  Stuntmeister   Of all the many stuntmen whose contribution was invaluable to the Western, Yakima Canutt is probably the most famous. The amazing under-the-coach

  Another in our occasional series of articles on Western cinematographers       Master of light and shade     The visual, how a

  Really quite bad   Back in 2014 I reviewed a dismally bad 1956 Johnny Carpenter movie I Killed Wild Bill Hickok (click the link