Edward J. Le Saint Movies

Like the other entries Columbia's "Five Little Peppers" series, The Five Little Peppers at Home is based on characters created by Margaret Sidney. Edith Fellows stars as Polly, the oldest child of the Pepper clan, while her four siblings are portrayed by Dorothy Ann Seers (as Phronsie), Ronald Sinclair (Jasper), Charles Peck (Joey) and Davey (Bobby Larson). This time around, Polly and the kids try to figure out a way to save their mother (Dorothy Peterson) from bankruptcy, with the help of crusty-but-lovable Mr. King (Clarence Kolb). After a slow-moving hour or so, the film picks up tremendously in the final reel when the kids are trapped in a copper mine cave-in, sparking a tension-filled rescue effect. A bit too syrupy sweet for modern tastes, Five Little Peppers at Home is redeemed by the cynical performance of Rex Evans as a sneering butler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Like its predecessor The Man From Tumbleweeds, the 1940 Bill Elliot western The Return of Wild Bill was directed by Joseph H. Lewis, whose innovative choice of camera angles was always well worth watching. Returning to his home town after a long absence, Wild Bill Saunders (Elliot) discovers that his father has been mortally wounded by a gang of frontier hooligans. Adding intrigue to the proceedings is the fact that Katie Kilgore (Luana Anders), one of the film's two leading ladies (the other is Iris Meredith), is the sister of outlaw leader Matt Kilgore (George Lloyd). Seemingly a mere villainess, Katie reveals that she's a lot more complex than anyone imagines, carefully tipping off the honest cattlemen in the district whenever her brother goes on a rampage. Her curious predilection for working both sides of the fence costs Katie her life at fadeout time, but she remains in the memory far longer than any of the film's other plot contrivances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the third of his four Wild Bill Saunders Westerns, Bill Elliott, "the Peaceable Man," is assigned by Governor Dawson (Don Beddoe) to put a stop to the reign of terror, including cold-blooded murder, perpetrated by Powder Kilgore (Raphael Bennett). When the state legislature refuses to fund a legitimate rangers organization, Wild Bill instead enlists a group of tough convicts, whom he promises freedom if they help capture Kilgore and his chief lieutenant, Lightning Barlow (Francis Walker). Unfortunately, one of the convicts, Shifty (Ernie Adams), lives up to his name by betraying his comrades in arms to Kilgore but after a furious gun battle at the gang's shootout, Wild Bill manages to bring peace to the area. Nevertheless, when asked to captain the newly founded rangers organization, the hero instead promotes his new friend, former convict Honest John (Al Hill), and heads off to new adventures. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Charles Starrett plays the title role in Stranger from Texas, but he's no stranger to the cliches inherent in the film's plotline. Things get under way when US marshal Tom (Starrett) finds himself in the midst of a range war. The villains are a band of rustlers who play both sides of the confrontation against one another, the better to move in and claim all the livestock. In time-honored fashion, the plot is resolved with a fistfight between Charles Starrett and his perennial screen foe Dick Curtis. Lorna Gray substitutes for Starrett's usual leading lady Iris Meredith. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The real Frank and Jesse James were murderous thugs, light years away from the Robin Hood image imposed on them by revisionist dime novelists. But in 1939, 20th Century-Fox wasn't about to build an expensive Technicolor feature around the exploits of a couple of low-lives, thus Jesse James upholds the mythos, offering us the standard whitewashed version of the James boys. According to Nunally Johnson's irresistibly entertaining screenplay, Jesse (Tyrone Power) and Frank (Henry Fonda) become train and bank robbers to avenge the death of their mother (Jane Darwell), killed at the behest of greedy railroad interests. Once he feels his work is done, Jesse settles down to a life of marital domesticity--only to be shot in the back by cowardly Bob Ford (John Carradine). Frank James is left alive at film's end, paving the way for the 1941 sequel The Return of Frank James. Director Henry King stages the action sequences in glorious outsized fashion, notably the famous bank-robbery scene in which Jesse rides his horse through a plate glass window. The scenes involving both James brothers are stolen hands-down by Henry Fonda, not so much because he was a better actor than Tyrone Power but because his character had all the best lines. Jesse James was filmed largely on location in Missouri, resulting in crowd-control nightmares for the picture's beleaguered assistant directors. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The second of three films based on the Wyatt Earp biography by Stuart N. Lake, Frontier Marshal stars Randolph Scott as Marshal Earp of Tombstone. Earp and his brothers enforce the law as much by reputation as by gunplay. Occasionally the marshal's efforts are complicated by his "friendly enemy" Doc Halliday (based on Doc Holliday and played by Cesar Romero), a consumptive gunslinger who runs the gambling activities in town. When a murderous outlaw (Joe Sawyer) invades Tombstone and kills Halliday, Earp is moved to action -- and the result is the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. A remake of the 1934 film of the same name, Frontier Marshal was itself remade by John Ford as My Darling Clementine (1946), with Henry Fonda as Earp and Victor Mature as Doc Holliday. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Former outlaw Charles Starrett goes straight and becomes a sheriff. In this capacity, he tries to bring his old partners in crime to justice. They don't cotton to this, and thereby hang the conflict. Everything is solved in a climactic fistfight with all-around villain Dick Curtis. Iris Meredith is the heroine, Hank Bell is the comedy relief, Edward LeSaint is the local authority figure, Bob Nolan provides the musical interludes, and Sam Nelson directs. In other words, Thundering West is virtually indistinguishable from the previous entries in Columbia's Charles Starrett western series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this espionage drama, an inventor creates a way to send television broadcasts across the country and finds himself pursued by international spies. Eventually the enemy succeeds in stealing the plans. But in the end, he gets it back and even falls in love with his former partner's daughter, with whom, thanks to his new television, he has a long-distance romance. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Gail Patrick plays a brilliant but naive country lawyer brought to the city to defend gangster Sidney Toler. She is subsidized by pillar of society Otto Kruger, who is actually the "big boy" behind the city's rackets. Ms. Patrick must prove that Toler didn't own a weapon that he is accused of pointing at a terrified states' witness. She believes in her client's innocence, but honest district attorney Robert Preston steers her to the side of Right. Patrick is exonerated of a complicity charge, and bad guys Toler and Kruger are carted off to prison. Ironically, Gail Patrick was later the executive producer of the TV series Perry Mason. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cattle Raiders is a standard-issue Charles Starrett western, right down to the usual supporting players (Iris Meredith, Dick Curtis, Edward LeSaint et. al.) Once again, Starrett (this time going by the name of Tom Reynolds) is forced to clear himself of a murder charge. This he does in record time, with barely a scratch on his face or a wrinkle in his clothes. It is giving away absolutely nothing to reveal that the genuine killer is played by Dick Curtis, who spent most of the 1930s and 1940s duking it out with Starrett in one western after another. Between action highlights, Donald "Slim" Grayson and the Sons of the Pioneers offer several westernized tunes, including the amusingly wry "This Ain't the Same Old Range." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

I Am the Law is arguably the best of the late-1930s films inspired by the racket-busting career of New York district attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Edward G. Robinson switches to the right side of the law as the Dewey counterpart, here named John Lindsay (!) A feisty, no-nonsense law professor, Lindsay is approached by a group of concerned citizens to act as special prosecutor to rid up their (unnamed) state of big-time lawbreakers. He wastes no time taking charge, storming into the prosecutor's office and firing anyone whom he suspects of being "on the take." With the help of his dedicated law students, who work alongside him for free, Lindsay purges the local government of such corrupt influences as Eugene Ferguson (Otto Kruger), the outwardly respectable "brains" behind the rackets. Among the minor pleasures in I Am the Law is watching Robinson dancing the Big Apple with gun moll Wendy Barrie in an early scene, and his firing of suspicious-looking Charles Halton with a brusque "Don't like your face! Never have! You've got shifty eyes and a weak chin!" (which, indeed, were Halton's screen trademarks). Barbara O'Neil, who the following year played Scarlet O'Hara's mother in Gone with the Wind, is quietly effective as Robinson's supportive wife. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the rough-and-tumble world of post-Civil War Texas, ex-Confederate soldier Kirk Jordan (Randolph Scott) crosses paths with ranch owner Ivy Preston (Joan Bennett). Although a loyal Southerner, Jordan can't get past the waste and tragedy of the four years that have just ended, but Ivy is eager to help keep the war for the Confederacy alive, running guns to her would-be lover, unrepentant ex-Confederate captain Alan Sanford (Robert Cummings), who is prepared to ally himself with the Mexican emperor Maximilian as a means of starting a new war against the "Yankee" government. Ivy is attracted to Jordan after he boldly helps her evade an army checkpoint, until she finds out how relatively peaceable he is. Jordan and his sidekick, Cal Tuttle (Raymond Hatton), are prepared to make a cattle drive to the new railhead at Abilene and sell at a handsome profit, but Ivy wants nothing to do with the United States or Yankee money, even as her more practically minded grandmother (May Robson) and her foreman, Chuckawalla (Walter Brennan), try to convince her otherwise. Only when Isaiah Middlebrack (Robert H. Barrat), the corrupt local administrator for the occupying Northern government, arrives announcing a head-tax on cattle does she change her mind and begin to see some worth in Jordan's ambition and boldness. Two deaths, of Middlebrack and a much-loved ranch hand, allow the ranchers and the occupying soldiers to reconcile and make the drive together to the border. Jordan and his outfit find a stricken, desperate Abilene, bereft of anything to be shipped on the new rail line. Jordan's arrival accomplishes everything he hopes for and more, and in the end Ivy sees and also glories in his vision, of a United States reunited and restored, growing and thriving as never before. But Jordan can't abide her continued affection for Alan, whose continued obsession with restoring the Confederacy is wearing on him and almost everyone else by now, and he plans on leaving. Ivy doesn't want to see that happen, but is torn over her lingering affection for Alan. But then she learns that he is planning to join a new organization, the Ku Klux Klan, intended to drive the Yankees out of the South, and she suddenly has to choose with which of these men her future lies. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The locale is slightly different in the Charles Starrett western Call of the Rockies, but the familiar Starrett formula remains the same. Starrett plays Clint Buckley, who defends female rancher Ann Bradford (Iris Meredith) against mortgage-holding villain Matt Stark (Dick Curtis). The bad guy retaliates by framing Clint for murder, but our hero sets things right in a bone-shattering fistic battle royal. Donald "Slim" Grayson and the Sons of the Pioneers wander in and out of the action to render a trio of pleasant sagebrush ballads. In addition to Iris Meredith and Dick Curtis, Call of the Rockies features such Starrett-series perennials as Edward LeSaint, Edmund Cobb, and George Cheseboro. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide