Tag Archives: Jennifer Holt

The Tioga Kid (1948, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Singing Ranger Eddie Dean (played by the same-named Eddie Dean) and his sidekick, Soapy Jones (Roscoe Ates), are sent to track down the Tioga Kid, an outlaw who happens to look just like Eddie.  Soapy suggests that The Tioga Kid could be a long lost twin brother.  Eddie isn’t sure because his parents were killed in an Indian ambush when he was just a baby.  This seemed to be the backstory for many of Poverty Row’s favorite western heroes.

Dean plays both Eddie and the Tioga Kid.  You can tell them apart because the Tioga Kid doesn’t sing and always dresses in black while Eddie dresses in white and won’t stop singing.  Twin rivals were another big thing when it came to B-westerns.  Thanks to then revolutionary split-screen technology, matinee audiences could enjoy the sight of their favorite heroes shooting at themselves.  Eddie Dean was usually cast as a mild-mannered hero so he really seems to enjoy the chance to be bad as the Tioga Kid.

The Tioga Kid is a film that will be appreciated by those who are already fans of B-westerns.  The Tioga Kid was made late in the B-western cycle and there are a lot signs that it was made in a hurry.  There’s a scene involving a stunt man where he’s not even wearing the same shirt as the person he’s standing in for.  Matinee audiences probably didn’t mind.  They were too busy watching Eddie Dean shoot at himself and cheering him on during the movie’s big fist fight scene.  Eddie Dean may not have been a great actor but he could throw a punch with the best of them.

Guns of the Law (1944, directed by Elmer Clifton)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Three Texas Rangers — Tex Wyatt (Dave O’Brien), Jim Steele (James Newill), and Panhandle Perkins (Guy Wilkerson) — ride into a small town.  They each arrive separately and they all sing while sitting on their horses.  They’re in town to help out Jed Wilkins, who was Panhandle’s superior officer during the Civil War.  Jed is having a nervous breakdown because a crooked surveyor (Jack Ingram) and shifty lawyer (Charles King) are trying to cheat him out of his land.  Jed thinks that he’s serving in the war again so Panhandle has to wear his old Confederate uniform to keep Jed from losing it any further.

The Texas Rangers starred in a series of B-westerns.  This one is mostly amiable, though I think modern viewers will probably have a more difficult time with the Confederate uniform than viewers did in 1944.    Having watched enough of these movies, I’ve lost track of the number of crooked lawyers that Charles King played over the years.  He was one of the great B-movie villains, that’s for sure.

I don’t really know what to make of the singing cowboy genre.  Why are they singing while riding through the wilderness and trying not to get shot?  Do all of the Texas Rangers sing or is it just these three?  This movie raises so many questions.  What’s odd is that the songs in this movie are actually really catchy.  I can still remember the tunes, if not all of the lyrics.  Don’t break the law, the Rangers sang as they rode out of town at the end of the movie.  Don’t break the law.

Gun Smoke (1945, directed by Howard Bretherton)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On the frontier, a stagecoach has been overturned and both the passenger and the driver have been killed by outlaws.  The passenger was Hinkley, an archeologist.  Who would want to kill a harmless archeologist?  That’s what Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) set out to discover.  While Nevada Jack asks questions in the nearby town, Sandy disguises himself as a medicine man.

It all links back to an old Indian site that is said to be full of gold relics.  Jane (Jennifer Holt), the daughter of Hinkley’s partner, reveals that the only other person who knows the location of the site is an old Indian named Shag (Dimas Sotello).  Jack and Sandy have to try to track down Shag before he’s found the gang that killed Hinkley.

Yes, it’s another Johnny Mack Brown western.  Despite the title, this has nothing to do with the television series that featured James Arness and Amanda Blake.  Gun Smoke is still a solid western, featuring a determined performance from Johnny Mack Brown and some memorable villains from the usual poverty row western stock company.  Once again, Frank Ellis shows up as a henchman, though the identity of the main villain is actually a little more interesting than was typical for these films.  Johnny Mack Brown is a little more serious than usual, throwing punches with authority.  For fans of B-westerns, Gun Smoke is an above average entry in Johnny Mack Brown’s seemingly endless filmography.

A Movie A Day #53: Ghost Town Renegades (1947, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

gtrWhen a federal surveyor disappears while checking out the ghost town of Waterhole, the U.S. Marshall sends Cheyenne Davis (Lash La Rue) and Fuzzy Jones (Al “Fuzzy” St. John) to investigate.  It turns out that gold has been discovered around Waterhole, on land owned by the Trent Family.  Bad guy Vance Sharpe (Jack Ingram) is trying to kill the last remaining Trents — Rodney (Steve Frost) and his daughter, Diane (Jennifer Holt) — so that he can claim the land as his own.  As Cheyenne and Fuzzy investigate, there are plenty of shootouts, fist fights, and an out of control stagecoach.  Since this is a Lash LaRue film, there is also a lot of exciting bullwhip action.

If you’re like me, the name Lash La Rue immediately makes you think of Pulp Fiction and Harvey Keitel asking John Travolta, “What about you, Lash La Rue, can you keep your spurs from jingling and jangling?”  But, long before Quentin Tarantino ever came up with that line of dialogue, Lash La Rue was a legitimate Western star, starring in several B-westerns in the 1940s and 50s.  What set Lash apart from other western stars was that he looked like he could have been Humphrey Bogart’s younger brother, he always wore black, and he often used a bullwhip instead of a gun.  In fact, when Harrison Ford needed someone to train him how to use a bullwhip for Raiders of the Lost Ark, 65 year-old Lash La Rue was the man that they called.

I have read that Ghost Town Renegades is considered to be the best of La Rue’s movies.  I haven’t seen enough of them to say whether it’s the best but Ghost Town Renegades is an entertaining and fast-paced B-western.  Lash La Rue is good with a whip, Jennifer Holt is beautiful, and not even the broad comedy of Fuzzy St. John detracts.

Interesting to note: Jennifer Holt, who co-starred in several of La Rue’s movies, was the daughter of Jack Holt and the sister of Tim Holt, both of whom were prominent western stars themselves.