Blu-Ray Review: Colt .45, The Complete Series (1957-1960).

Well, here’s one I never thought we’d see, especially on Blu-Ray. Colt .45 (1957-1960) was one of Warner Bros’ Western shows of the late 50s — based (rather loosely) on their 1950 film starring Randolph Scott. It didn’t become a rerun favorite like Maverick or Cheyenne, and they haven’t been seen anywhere in years. (I saw a couple of episodes in 16mm at a Western film show ages ago.) Now all three seasons are available, and looking just heavenly, in a new Blu-Ray set from Warner Archive.

Wayde Preston plays Christopher Colt, a government agent posing as a Colt gun salesman. As he roams the West, he gets involved in all sorts of stuff, usually leading to some fancy shooting on his part. In the first season’s titles, Preston shoots toward the camera, then does some nice pistol-spinning as he puts his twin Colts back in their holsters. (Reminds me a little of the titles to The Rifleman.)

Wayde Preston and James Garner hanging around the Warner lot.

Though they run just half an hour and the budgets were obviously pretty slim, it’s a good show. All the WB Western series looked good, benefitting from excellent stock footage, using some nice WB sets and boasting terrific guest stars. Colt .45 featured Charles Bronson, Wayne Morris, Angie Dickinson, Robert Conrad, John Doucette, Ray Teal, Frank Ferguson, I. Stanford Jolley, Kathleen Crowley, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Lambert, Glenn Strange, Leonard Nimoy, Virginia Gregg, Paul Fix, Robert J. Wilke, Dorothy Provine, Lyle Talbot, Roy Barcroft, Adam West and Sandy Koufax(!).

Some solid directors worked on it, too — guys like Lee Sholum, Paul Landres, George Waggner, Lew Landers, Edward Bernds and Oliver Drake. 

The first season is excellent, but then things kinda went awry. Wayde Preston left the show (the usual pay dispute, they say), making for a short second season. For the third season, Donald May took over as Sam Colt, Jr., Christopher Colt’s cousin.

Warners evidently badmouthed Preston and he had a hard time landing parts around town. He was brought back toward the end of the third season, now supporting his cousin Sam. Colt .45 didn’t last beyond that third season and Preston eventually headed to Italy to make spaghetti Westerns and Anzio (1968).

With just two-and-a-half seasons (only 67 episodes), and a star who disappears midstream, it sorta makes sense that Colt .45 wouldn’t enjoy the perpetual syndication of other Western shows of the period. When it’s good, it’s really good, usually because of a solid story or an exemplary performance — Wayne Morris and John Doucette, for example, are excellent in their episodes.

Then there are the Blu-Rays. I’ve never seen a black & white TV show look this good — ever. There’s not a lot of old TV on Blu-Ray. I Love Lucy! and The Andy Griffith Show are, and they can’t hold a digital candle to this set. It’s stunning. From the logo in the grips of Preston’s Colts to the sewn-up holes in John Doucette’s shirt, the detail here is really incredible. (Of course, this highlights stuff like the stock footage stage driver looking nothing like the guy who speaks to Preston seconds later, but who cares?) The contrast is perfectly dialed in and the grain is just right. Whoever twiddled the knobs on this thing, I’d like to buy you lunch! Same goes for the folks in the vaults watching over this old material.

In short, the fact that Colt .45 made its way to video at all is a real surprise. That it would come out of left field looking like this, well, that seems like a miracle. Colt .45 – The Complete Series comes highly recommended. I think you’ll like the show, and I know you’ll be blown away by the care Warner Archive has given it.

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DVD Review: Texas City (1952).

Directed by Lewis D. Collins
Produced by Vincent M. Fennelly
Written by Joseph F. Poland
Director Of Photography: Ernest Miller
Film Editor: Sam Fields
Music by Raoul Kraushaar

Cast: Johnny Mack Brown (Marshal Johnny Mack Brown), James Ellison (Jim Kirby), Lois Hall (Lois Upton), Terry Frost (Trag), Lane Bradford (Hank), Lyle Talbot (Captain Hamilton), Marshall Reed (Yarnell), Pierce Lyden (Marshal George Markham), Lorna Thayer (Aunt Harriet), Bud Osborne, Bill Coontz, John Hart

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Seemed like a Lyle Talbot kind of day, so I pulled out Monogram’s Texas City (1952) starring Johnny Mack Brown — a solid little Western produced toward the end of Brown’s run at Monogram.

After a series of Army gold shipments are held up, Marshall Johnny Mack Brown is brought in to investigate. He suspects that the crooks are using the ghost town of Dawson City as their base. There he meets Lois Upton (Lois Hall), a young lady who’s just come West after inheriting the town’s dilapidated hotel and Jim Kirby (James Ellison), a young man who arouses Johnny Mack’s suspicions. 

This one’s got everything: gold shipment robberies, a ghost town, a cave hideout (with a secret entrance behind a grandfather clock), a pretty girl from back East, Bud Osbourne driving the stage and, of course, Lyle Talbot as a crooked cavalry officer.

One of my favorite things about the Johnny Mack Brown Monograms is his hat. (Never underestimate the power of a good hat in a Western.) Conversely, Lyle Talbot’s hat is just terrible. He must’ve made somebody mad in the Monogram wardrobe department.

Lois Hall was in three Johnny Mack pictures, a couple Whip Wilson things, two Durango Kids, some Sam Katzman serials at Columbia and Republic’s Daughter Of The Jungle (1949). She’s usually terrific, but she doesn’t have a lot to do in this one. James Ellison had been in the early Hopalong Cassidy pictures, I Walked With A Zombie (1941) and a series of Lippert Westerns co-starring Russell Hayden. Not long after Texas City, Ellison would leave the picture business for real estate.

John Hart appears as a cavalryman in the opening shootout — about a year before he (temporarily) replaced Clayton Moore on The Lone Ranger. Lorna Thayer, who plays Lois Hall’s aunt, later played the waitress who winds up on Jack Nicholson’s bad side in Five Easy Pieces (1970).

Texas City is one of nine Monogram Westerns included in Volume 4 of Warner Archive’s Monogram Cowboy Collection. It has all three pictures Lois Hall did with Johnny Mack Brown.

Texas City was beautifully shot by Ernest Miller, making good use of locations we’ve all seen a hundred times. So it’s nice to see Miller’s work well-presented here. Though it obviously wasn’t given what we’d call a full restoration today, the transfer is excellent. These Monogram Western sets are wonderful, one of my favorite things Warner Archive has done. If you don’t have ’em, you’re really missing out. Highly, highly recommended.

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DVD Review: Colorado Ambush (1951).

Directed by Lewis Collins
Produced by Vincent M. Fennelly
Screenplay by Myron Healey
Director Of Photography: Gilbert Warrenton
Film Editor: Fred Maguire
Music by Edward J. Kay

Cast: Johnny Mack Brown (Johnny Mack Brown), Myron Healey (Chet Murdock), Lois Hall (Janet Williams), Tommy Farrell (Terry Williams), Christine McIntyre (Mae Star), Lee Roberts (Gus), Marshall Bradford (Ben Williams), Lyle Talbot (Sheriff Ed Lowery)

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Lois Hall came up recently when Imprint Films announced their upcoming Blu-Ray set Tales Of Adventure, Collection Two — which has her starring in Republic’s Daughter Of The Jungle (1949). And since I’ve been meaning to revisit the Warner Archive Monogram Cowboy Collection sets, why not take a look at one of Miss Hall’s Johnny Mack Brown pictures? Conveniently, all three are on Volume 4 of that terrific series.

In Colorado Ambush (1951), somebody’s picking off Wells Fargo riders to get ahold of the payroll. It looks like an inside job, and Johnny Mack Brown is sent to investigate. He soon meets the Williams family — father Marshall Bradford, daughter Lois Hall and son Tommy Farrell — who care for Wells Fargo’s horses and are in charge of transporting the payroll. Only they know when a rider is carrying the money.

Turns out Farrell’s in cahoots with the ruthless Myron Healey and Christine McIntyre to ambush the riders toting the dough. And when Brown and sheriff Lyle Talbot start to sort out the scheme and things go south for the crooks, the bullets fly and the bodies start piling up. There’s not a lot of the cast left breathing at the end of the picture’s 51 minutes.

Monogram’s B Westerns of the late 40s and early 50s were obviously done on the skinny, both time-wise and financially. But there’s usually plenty of shootin’ and ridin’, some great character actors — and of course terrific leads like Wild Bill Elliott and Johnny Mack Brown. What’s more, they tend to be more adult than what you expect from pictures like this. And in the case of the Johnny Mack Brown films, there’s the added benefit of the wonderful hats he wears.

In an interview with Boyd Magers, Lois Hall said of Johnny Mack Brown: “I feel the same thing everybody else says about him…a true gentleman. And a little distant. He wasn’t one to sit around the set. He went back to his dressing room between things. But a very pleasant person.” Brown was evidently as likable on the set as he is on the screen. 

Myron Healey is not only the villain in Colorado Ambush, he was also the screenwriter. His script is pretty clever — how the bad guys know when the riders are carrying the cash is rather ingenious. Healey scripted another Johnny Mack picture, Texas Lawmen (1951).

Lyle Talbot plays the sheriff, an old friend of Brown’s. This was about a year after Talbot appeared as Lex Luther in the serial Atom Man Vs. Superman (1950). It’s always a treat when Talbot shows up in something, and since he made a point of never turning down work, he turns up quite a bit.

Lewis Collins directed dozens of Westerns like this, including some of the William Elliott and Whip Wilson Monograms (oh, and 1950’s Hot Rod) that were being done around the same time Colorado Ambush was released. Collins died of a heart attack in 1956. He’s a bit like Lesley Selander — you can count on him to make a decent, fast-moving Western under about any circumstances.

As I mentioned earlier, Colorado Ambush is included in Volume 4 of Warner Archive’s Monogram Cowboy Collection, a nine-picture set that also includes some Jimmy Wakely films. It gives you all three Brown Westerns co-starring Lois Hall, the other two being Blazing Bullets (1951) and Texas City (1952). The films look great — even though they don’t get an actual restoration, the transfers are very nicely done. Personally, I kinda like some dust or scratches here and there, and there are a few incidents of each in Colorado Ambush. The sound’s excellent. I wish Warner Archive had kept digging around in the Monogram vaults. The stuff they put out are some of the real joys of my collection. 

Colorado Ambush, this set, the Monogram Cowboy Collection and anything else Warner Archive gave us from Monogram is highly recommended. You’re not gonna come across a masterpiece, but you’re certainly gonna be entertained.

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