Lafe [Lafayette] McKee Movies

Three outlaws go straight in order to protect a young girl from her unscrupulous guardian in this low-budget Western, the third in a series of six Jack Perrin oaters produced by Reliable Pictures. Bandits Jack Reed (Perrin), Judge (Nelson McDowell), and Estebán (Chris-Pin Martin) are mistaken for heroes by lovely Nora Hastings (Lillian Gilmore), who they escort to the town of Rawhide. The three friends are recognized, but Nora convinces the sheriff (Lafe McKee) to let them be while she inspects her inheritance, the Elite Saloon. The saloon, alas, is all boarded up and seemingly worthless, but Hal Drummond, Nora's guardian and the partner of her late uncle, promises to send her a share of the money if he can sell the property. Nora is barely out of town again before Drummond opens the saloon, which had only appeared to be in bad shape. The three former bandits recognize a scam when they see one, and open a competing bar across the street to force Drummond out of business. Jack, meanwhile, is arrested for killing the railroad agent but escapes and goes in search of the real culprit. The real murderer, of course, proves to be Drummond, and after his arrest, Jack reveals himself to be an undercover agent from the express company. Former silent screen star Perrin was battling an unbecoming weight-gain when he starred in this, his penultimate series of B-Westerns. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Chesterfield's City Park is dominated by the strong performances of venerable character actors Henry B. Walthall, Wilson Benge and Lafe McKee. When impoverished Rose Wentworth (Sally Blane) poses as a streetwalker in order to get arrested and secure herself food and shelter, she is paroled in the custody of eccentric-but-lovable Colonel Ransome (Walthall). The Colonel brings Rose into his own home as part of her reformation process, which displeases his wife (Judith Voselli) and son Raymond (Matty Kemp). The Ransome family responds to this "outrage" by cutting off the Colonel's funds and throwing him out of the house. Undaunted, the Colonel and his two park-bench chums (Benge and McKee) move into a boarding house, bringing Rose along as housekeeper. Having at long last proven her worthiness and virtue (which the Colonel never doubted for a minute), Rose finds happiness in the arms of handsome Charlie Hooper (Johnny Harron). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After helping prevent a bank robbery, young drifter John Weston (John Wayne) is assigned by Marshal Higgins (George "Gabby" Hayes to look into a series of suspicious deaths among champion rodeo riders. Weston falls for lovely Marjorie Carter (Polly Ann Young) along the way but she gets jealous when he suddenly shifts his attention to fiery Dolores (Anita Campillo, whose name is misspelled "Compillo" in the onscreen credits). The Mexican charmer, however, is in league with Spike Barton (Edward Peil, Sr.), the brain behind the murders, and Weston's interest is purely business. Like most of John Wayne's "Lone Star" Westerns, The Man from Utah was filmed along California's Kern River. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Assigned to write and direct the John Wayne western West of the Divide, Robert N. Bradbury dug out the plotline he'd used so often and to such good effect in his son Bob Steele's vehicles. Wayne plays frontiersman Ted Hayden, who spends most of the picture searching for the man who killed his parents. Along the way, he "tames" spoiled heroine Fay Winter (Virginia Brown Faire) and rediscovers his long-lost brother Spud (Billy O'Brien). John Wayne's fistfights with chief heavy Yakima Canutt aren't in the same league as his later Canutt-supervised stunt sequences, but they're pretty good by their own standards. West of the Divide was the fourth entry in Wayne's "Lone Star" series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his first in a series of well-mounted Westerns and action melodramas for independent producer Sol Lesser, George O'Brien plays Ernest Selby, a young Easterner who cannot get rid of his inheritance -- an Arizona ranch -- soon enough. But when Sam Hepburn (Henry Hall), the wheelchair-bound operator of his ranch, mistakenly assumes that the youngster is seeking a job to get better acquainted with his haughty daughter Ann (Irene Hervey), Selby decides to stick around and look into the mysterious disappearance of 10,000 heads of cattle. With the help of cowhand Nebrasky Kemp (Syd Saylor), our hero quickly learns that nothing at the Red Rock Ranch is quite as it first appears: Old man Hepburn is only faking an injury, and the foreman, Hyslip (LeRoy Mason), knows more about the missing cattle than he cares to admit. Released by the Fox company, The Dude Ranger was filmed on location at Utah's Zion National Park. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a state trooper falls in love with a night club singer. The club owner is a racketeer using the nightspot as a front for his illegal business. His downfall begins when he hires thugs to beat up the cop. Later the cop gets his revenge by rallying together a group of ex-cons and using them to catch the evil racketeer. They do so, and the lovers are safe to pursue their relationship. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this western, a band of avaricious men kill a rancher in order to take over his land. The dead man's nephew was slated to inherit the ranch, but he has vanished so the outlaws hire another to impersonate the heir. Trouble ensues when the real heir, a state ranger, appears, gets his revenge, and gets his ranch. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Typical of Ken Maynard's offbeat approach to westerns, Honor of the Range stars Maynard as twin brothers -- one strong and heroic, the other weak and dishonest. The "good" brother takes his sibling's place to get the goods on all-around villain Rawhide (Fred Kohler Sr.), who manages to live off his ill-gotten gains in grand style. At one point, the plot requires Maynard to pose as a song-and-dance man, which he does with surprising effectiveness. The now-famous climax finds kidnapped heroine Mary (Cecilia Parker) distracting Rawhide's henchman by loudly and furiously playing on the villain's mighty Wurlitzer organ! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kermit Maynard, the talented brother of western favorite Ken Maynard, launched his own starring series for Ambassador Films with The Fighting Trooper. Maynard is cast as fledgling Royal Canadian Mountie Burke, who hopes to avenge the murder of his best friend. Disguising himself as a trapper, Burke infiltrates the hideout of the supposed murderer. Upon falling in love with the "killer's" sister (Barbara Worth), our hero endeavors to prove the fugitive's innocence. More carefully produced than most independent westerns, The Fighting Trooper kept Maynard on horseback for the most part, allowing this strapping six-footer to do what he did best. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Poverty Row entrepreneur Victor Adamson (hiding behind the pseudonym of Denver Dixon) once again managed to release a completely incomprehensible Western filled to the brim with tired old clichés and the most wooden acting this side of cigar-store Indians. Silent screen cowboy Buddy Roosevelt reached perhaps the nadir of his career with this film, in which he plays a deputy marshal trailing a gang of claim jumping murderers lead by pudgy Olin Francis. There is something about a girl (Patsy Bellamy), who must marry in order to cash in on an inheritance; a scheming woman (Anne Howard), who wants the valuable land for herself; and sundry other Western shenanigans, few of which, when strung together by the inept Adamson, make any sense. Strangely, most of the action is sans hero Roosevelt, who remains nameless and is knocked out cold early on in the proceedings. The tired comedy relief is provided by the toothless Si Jenks, and the director briefly appears, Hitchcock style, as a townsman. Typically, supporting actor Bartlett Carré's name is misspelled in the film's credits. Although released in 1934, Lightning Range was filmed a year earlier. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The Man From Monterey was the last of John Wayne's "B"-westerns for Warner Bros. The Duke plays U.S. army captain John Holmes, dispatched to Monterey to convince the ranchers to register their long-standing Spanish land grants, lest their property fall into the hands of undeserving strangers. This makes Holmes the enemy of local land swindler Don Luis Gonzales (Donald Reed), who has been plotting to grab up all the acreage for himself. Holmes must race against time to prevent Gonzales from achieving his goal by marrying Dolores (Ruth Hall), the daughter of the richest landowner (Lafe McKee) in the territory. John Wayne looks most uncomfortable in his ill-fitting army uniform and fancy-dancy Mexican duds -- but no more uncomfortable than Ken Maynard, who appears in the silent stock footage which is spread throughout The Man From Monterey. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With customary lack of restraint, Bela Lugosi tore into his role of Professor Strang, a foreign agent masquerading as a wax museum proprietor, in this the first of Mascot Pictures' five serials of 1933. Bela is smuggling jewels into the country as security for a loan. The "jools," however, are stolen by an escaped convict and sought by the omnipresent Whispering Shadow, a mysterious megalomaniac out to gain control of the entire world. A science wizard, the Shadow uses radio waves to kill his enemies, but no one knows who he is. In typical Mascot fashion, suspicion falls at various times on most of the cast members -- Lugosi, needless to say, most of all. As it turns out, despite a plethora of menacing close-ups, Bela is indeed only a red herring, the real culprit, in typical Mascot style, revealed instead to be a heretofore minor comic relief. Considering the fate of the actor in question, we shall break with tradition and name him. A major comic star of the late '20s, Karl Dane could only watch as his career collapsed at the changeover to sound due to an impenetrable Danish accent. All but unemployable, Dane was given this last chance to shine by producer Nat Levine, but audiences felt cheated by the serial's somewhat unfair denouement and The Whispering Shadow proved less a comeback than a debacle. Reduced to selling hot dogs from a stand outside his former studio, MGM, Dane ended his own life on April 14, 1934, one of the best remembered victims of the sound revolution. The Whispering Shadow marked the directorial debut of Colbert Clark, formerly of the script department, who was helped along the way by the veteran Albert Herman. The serial was also released in a truncated feature version. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

B-Western perennial Bob Steele made attempts at diversifying in 1933 by playing a circus acrobat in The Gallant Fool and a would-be boxer in The Fighting Champ, although, truth be told, never veering too far from the range in either. In The Fighting Champ, Steele plays Brick Loring, an itinerant cowboy who shows some promise as a prize-fighter. Crooked fight promoter Nifty Harmon (George Chesebro) attempts to bribe both Brick and his opponent Jock Malone (Charles King) to throw the match and although Brick only pretends to be interested, his backer, rancher Fred Mullins (Frank Ball), publicly accuses him of cheating. Mullins daughter Jean (Arletta Duncan), meanwhile, believes the young cowboy to be innocent and sets a trap for both Harmon and Malone. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide