Dead Man’s Gold (1948, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on March 8, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Jim Thornton (Britt Wood) has discovered a gold mine so he writes to his old friends, Lash LaRue (Lash La Rue) and Fuzzy (Al St. John), asking them to come help him guard it. When Lash and Fuzzy arrive, Jim is nowhere to be found. With the help of Jim’s niece (Peggy Stewart), they discover that Jim’s been murdered. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the murder was carried out by Conway (Jason Cason) and his men and that’s a good thing because a genius is something you will never find in a Lash La Rue western. However, Lash suspects that Conway was following someone else’s orders. He and Fuzzy set up a trap to reveal the true identity of the mastermind.

Lash dresses in all black and often uses a whip instead of a gun but this is still a standard B-western. Historically, it’s important because it was the first movie that La Rue made with producer Ron Ormond. Ormond later went from producing Lash La Rue films to directing them and Lash’s career never really recovered. (Ormond, whose non-Lash LaRue films included Mesa of Lost Women and If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, was never much of a director.) Fortunately, Dead Man’s Gold was directed by the dependable Ray Taylor, who keeps the action moving and crafts an adequate if not exactly memorable western.

There is one cool scene in Dead Man’s Gold, in which Lash uses his whip to knock a shot glass out of a bad guy’s hand. Let’s see The Lone Ranger do that!

Return of the Lash (1947, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on February 25, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

There’s another range war brewing on the frontier. Big Jim Kirby (George Chesebro) knows there’s plans for a new railroad so he wants to steal the land from the ranchers so he can make a fortune off a selling it. Kirby calls in everyone’s mortgage, knowing they’ll never be able to pay. Rancher Tom Grant (Buster Slaven) reaches out to Cheyenne Davis (Lash LaRue, a look alike for Humphrey Bogart)) and Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John) for help. Cheyenne raises the money but then he makes the mistake of trusting Fuzzy to deliver it. Fuzzy takes a knock to the noggin and now, he’s got amnesia. Where’s the money?

This is a standard B-western and you know the drill. Big Jim’s henchmen don’t want that money to get paid. Cheyenne is on the side of the angels. Fuzzy provides comic relief. Lash LaRue appeared in several B-westerns. He never became as big a star as some of his contemporaries but he did have a gimmick that made him memorable. Most westerns stars used guns. LaRue had a bullwhip. When LaRue was first offered the role of Cheyenne, he lied and said he could crack a whip. After he struggled to teach himself, tiny production company PRC hired a professional trainer. That was a huge expense for a poverty row studio but it paid off because LaRue became proficient with the whip and he had a surprisingly long career. He was born Alfred LaRue. The studio came up with the Lash nickname. Many western stars, like Johnny Mack Brown, played characters who shared their name. Lash almost always played Cheyenne Davis.

Lash LaRue’s movies were cheap and never that memorable. In this one, Lash barely appears and most of the action is carried out by Al St. John as Fuzzy. But Lash LaRue did play an important part in Hollywood history when he briefly came out of retirement to teach Harrison Ford how to crack a whip for a little film called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Fighting Vigilantes (1947, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

A town in the old west has problem. Any wagon that comes into town carrying food or cooking supplies is robbed by a group of bandits hired by Price Taylor (George Chesebro), who wants to make sure that he doesn’t have any competition when it comes to selling food at inflated prices to the townspeople. Because of Taylor’s price gouging, the ranchers are now in danger of starving but the law refuses to do anything to help because they’ve all been paid off by Taylor as well. Another group of masked people, known as The Fighting Vigilantes, are now robbing Taylor’s wagons. Things are getting violent and someone is going to get hurt.

Fortunately, Cheyenne Davis (Lash LaRue) and his sidekick, Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John), ride into town. Everyone thinks that Cheyenne is an outlaw because he wears all black and he carries a whip. What they don’t know is that Cheyenne and Fuzzy are actually undercover U.S. marshals. It doesn’t take long for Cheyenne to fall for Abby (Jennifer Holt), the daughter of a local rancher who is involved with the Vigilantes. When Abby’s father is arrested, Abby blames Cheyenne and says that Taylor will never be defeated. Fuzzy says that this proves that it’s best to stay away from women. Can Cheyenne Davis and his trust bullwhip prove them both wrong?

This was one of the many B-western programmers in which Lash LaRue played the role of Cheyenne Davis. Lash was unique amongst B-western heroes, in that he always dressed in black and he used a whip instead of a gun. Unfortunately, he wasn’t much of an actor and all of his films were low-budget, rush jobs but he did look pretty cool with a whip. The Fighting Vigilantes is typical of Lash’s later films but it does deserve some credit for having its heroes go up against not just a gang of outlaws but instead an entirely corrupt town. Taylor has taken over every institution in the town, leaving the people living under them no choice but to turn vigilante. The villains are so evil that they even shoot people in the back. It’s impossible not to enjoy Cheyenne demonstrating, via his whip, the foolishness of trying to draw a gun on Lash LaRue.

The movie ends as almost all of Lash LaRue’s adventures did, with everyone laughing as Cheyenne uses his bullwhip to nearly kill Fuzzy Jones before the two of them ride off to find more injustices that can be fixed with the crack of a whip. As for the real-life Lash LaRue, his movies eventually went out-of-style and, like a lot of the B-western stars, he moved over to television. He struggled with alcoholism and was arrested for vagrancy in 1966. However, he eventually turned his life around and, along with appearing in a few low-budget movies in the 70s, he spent his remaining years ministering to alcoholics in Florida, showing that the real-life Lash LaRue could do just as much good in the real world as he did in the movies.

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

Posted on February 22, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

gtr When 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.