Stanley Andrews | Through the Shattered Lens

Years ago, Bill Donner (George Cheseboro) double-crossed the other members of the Selby Gang and ran off with all of their stolen gold. Now, Donner is blind and half-crazy. When he says that he hid the gold in the ghost town of Shadeville, the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett), Smiley Burnette, and Sheriff Dodge (Stanley Andrews) ride off to find it.

Shadeville is long abandoned and, as the three men spend the night in a deserted saloon, Smiley is worried about ghosts. The Durango Kid tells the story of the first time he met the Selby Gang. The next morning, they discover that they are not the only ones who have come to Shadeville to look for the gold.

Like many of the later Durango Kid movies, Streets of Ghost Town is mostly made up of stock footage to Starrett’s earlier films. This was a cost-cutting technique on the part of Columbia Pictures but it actually works because the flashbacks were always to the horse chases and the gunfights that the audience came to see in the first place. In the days before home video and cable, those scenes were probably still new to many of the people sitting in the theater.

Starrett always made for a good hero and Smiley Burnett’s comic relief never took away from the films’s storylines. This outing features a great scene where Durango shoots a skull in the dark just to let anyone watching him know that he’s a good shot. I also enjoyed George Cheseboro’s manic performance as a man who really loves his gold. Despite all of the stock footage, Streets of Ghost Town is still an above average Durango Kid film, predictable but entertaining if you’re a fan of the genre.

The time is the late 1800s and the place is the town of Gunlock. Gunlock is split between the ranchers and the farmers, with the ranchers eager to buy all of the land around the town and the farmers refusing to sell. Trying to keep the peace is Sheriff Bill Jorden (John Agar), who not only wants to keep war from breaking out in Gunlock but who also wants to live up to the example of his legendary father.

There’s a prisoner in the Gunlock city jail. Sam Hall (Richard Boone) is a notorious gunman who has been convicted of killing three farmers. He’s due to hang at sunset but everyone in town believes that Sam will somehow escape the executioner. (They’re even taking bets down at the local saloon and casino.) Everyone knows that Sam was hired by the ranchers but Sam has yet to name which rancher specifically invited him to come to town. The farmers want to lynch Sam. The ranchers want to break him out of jail and arrange for him to be killed in the resulting firefight. Meanwhile, Sheriff Jorden insists that he’s going to carry out Sam’s sentence by the letter of the law. Complicating matters for Jorden is that he’s engaged to Ellen Ballard (Mamie Van Doren), the sister of the main rancher, George Ballard (Leif Erickson).

I was really surprised by Star in the Dust, which turned out to be far better than I would normally expect a John Agar/Mamie Van Doren western to be. Though Agar, Boone, and Van Doren get top-billing, Star in the Dust is really an ensemble piece, with several different people responding to the possible hanging of Sam Hall in their own way. Sam’s girlfriend, Nellie Mason (Colleen Gray), tries to figure out a way to keep Sam alive. One of the ranchers, Lew Hogan (Harry Morgan), is morally conflicted about whether or not to honor his word to help Sam escape, especially after he finds out that Sam tried to rape his wife (Randy Stuart). Even the old deputies (played by James Gleason and Paul Fix) get a few minutes in the spotlight before the shooting begins. The town of Gunlock comes to life and everyone, from the villains to the heroes, has a realistic motivation for reacting in the way that they do to Sam’s pending execution.

Mamie van Doren’s role is actually pretty small. She doesn’t have enough screen time to either hurt or help the film overall. John Agar is as stiff as always but, for once, it works for his character. Sheriff Jorden isn’t written to be a bigger-than-life John Wayne type. Instead, he’s just a small town lawman trying to do his job and keep the peace. Not surprisingly, the film is stolen by Richard Boone, who brings a lot of unexpected shading and nuance to the role of Sam Hall. Hall may be a killer but he has his own brand of integrity and, if he’s going to die, he’s determined to do it his way.

Produced by the legendary Albert Zugsmith, Star in the Dust is a surprisingly intelligent and well-acted B-western. If you watch carefully, you might even spot Clint Eastwood playing a ranch hand named Tom who wants to know if he should put money down on Sam Hall being hanged. Though he was uncredited in this tiny role, Star in the Dust was Eastwood’s first western.