Best Western Movies of 1915

Yukon Ed has asked saloon owner Ruby McGraw to marry him several times, and has been turned down each time. However, she falls for Jack Sturgess, a no-account who has seduced and abandoned a poor young girl and is escaping from his father's anger. She takes up with Jack to Ed's dismay, and soon the thing that Ed feared would happen does happen.

An outlaw on the run comes upon a widow and her small child. When the child is bitten by a snake, the outlaw risks his life by riding into town to get a doctor.

A saloon hostess loves Ramerrez, a notorious highwayman. Sheriff Jack Rance, who loves the girl too, instigates a card game that will determine the fate of all three of them. If she wins, the girl's lover will go free; but if she loses…

Luke McVane (William S. Hart) shoots a card-cheat in self-defense and has to make a run for it before the town lynch him.

Jim and Molly are set to get married when Molly finds out about her fiancé's criminal past. Bill Carey weasels his way into Molly's heart in the interim, eager to relieve her of her savings.

One of the earliest surviving short films by Franke Borzage. A simple western about a man who enjoys boozing, gambling and women.

A stagecoach robber falls in love with a saloon girl. However, she falls for a pastor, who converts her and she marries him. The robber is so impressed by this that he decides to turn over a new leaf. However, a shady gambler sets his sights on the former saloon girl, and the robber has to protect her from his advances.

One of the earliest westerns directed by William S. Hart. In this film Sferiff Hale (Hart) lets a villain escape to pay his 'debt' to him, at the risk of designation.

A rough criminal gets a second chance at life thanks to a kindly (and wealthy) lady saloon patron. But he hasn't gone straight yet, as he and a partner attempt to rob the home of a rich homeowner-- whose wife is asleep in the next room.

Only fragments remain of this 6-reel docudrama

Jim Houston, the "Shootin' Iron" Parson, comes to Barren Gulch to reform the morals of the frontier community.

Jim Maitland loses his last cent gambling the Double Stamp saloon and gambling hall, and shortly after it closes, he robs the proprietors "Keno" Bates and "Wind River"are robbed, at gunpoint. After the surprise, they track Maitland down, and Keno shoots him dead on self defense. Keno goes through his belongings and finds a letter and a locket; the letter announces the arrival of the deceased's sister, and the locket has a cameo picture of Doris Maitland. Thus, Keno tells Wind River they must do a heap of lying. Meeting the girl at the stagecoach's arrival, Keeno feels responsible for the innocent and attractive Ms. Maitland; he tells her a white lie, that her brother was a good man, "killed in a mine accident," who had left her a cabin and money - and Keno turns his own cabin over to Doris. Keno and Doris began to fall in love. Anita, a dance-hall girl, aggressively tries to seduce Keno.

"Bat" Peters, reformed gunfighter turned prospector, travels to Chicago to collect on a business deal with a mine promoter who turns out to be crooked.

A Western tale of revenge and redemption.

Billy commits a robbery but a preacher inspires him to have a change of heart.

The story concerns cowboy Tom Warner, who raises sheep on a cattle ranch owned by a man named Dixon, the father of his girlfriend Jean. Jean, meanwhile, is being menaced by a Mexican outlaw who wants to have his way with her. When Jean's father decides he no longer wants Tom to raise sheep on his ranch they quarrel, and Dixon later sends a gang of thuggish ranch hands to persuade Tom to see things his way.

Gerald, the somewhat frail son of a wealthy New York family, is bested at the beach by Bill, a strapping young cowboy from Arizona. His fiancée Mary, ashamed of Gerald's "yellow streak", leaves him and goes by train to visit some friends in Arizona, with Bill in tow. Gerald follows them, and before long he and Mary winds up captured by Yaqui Indians and Gerald must prove to Mary that he is not the "weakling" she thinks he is by coming up with a plan for them to escape their captors.

A cowboy gets a message that his sister's husband has left her and she is in trouble. When he gets there, he finds her dead. He sets out to track down the husband.

After arriving in a hostile Western town, Hogan meets the Wild West head-on. A shack loaded with dynamite aids his return to urbanity. "Plenty of western color helps to make the production an attractive one apart from its comic attributes. In this film Charles Murray as Hogan is his usual comical self." -The Moving Picture World, March 13, 1915.

Tom is attracted by an actress. When she and her company arrive at his ranch, he tries to attract her attention.

The story is set in Alaska, where spoiled and pampered heiress Octavia Van Ness has come for her health. Here she meets 'Chuck' Hemingway, who despite his rough exterior is likewise a child of wealth, and a Yale graduate to boot. When Van Ness violently rejects his romantic overtures, Hemingway turns to an old Indian chum for advice. The Indian suggests rather chauvinistically that the way to win a headstrong girl is to "tame" her -- that is, treat 'er rough and make 'er like it.

Tom and Dick are good friends, but they are both in love with the same young woman, Vera. Vera herself cannot decide which of the two suitors she prefers. Realizing that Vera cannot make up her mind, the two young men turn to their friend Bill Bush for help. After thinking it over, Bill suggests an unusual contest to see which one gets to ask Vera to marry him.

Chimmie is sent to Death Valley CA as part of a railroad scheme. He's to pretend to have discovered gold there, then set a new transcontinental record heading east. It doesn't quite work out that way.

Broncho Billy, a prospector, makes a rich strike, but while he is examining the rock he is being watched by three claim jumpers. The minute he leaves the spot the jumpers gather up some samples of the ore, and after replacing Broncho's sign with one of their own, start for the claim agent's office.

Dakota Dan, who runs the saloon and gambling hall, is refusing to take another drink with the boys, who commence to kid him, saying he's been scared to drink ever since he heard the new parson's daughter was going to convert him. Dakota flushes and replies half angrily that he has never seen the parson's girl and don't ever want to. However that afternoon Daisy goes to the saloon and invites Dakota to attend church. Dakota refuses her invitation. Daisy tells him she will make a bargain with him to tend his bar for five minutes if he will go to church the next day. Dakota is slightly startled, but he admires her grit and accepts the challenge. Daisy goes behind the bar. The men line up and she is about to serve a fresh guy when he suddenly reaches over and kisses her. Dakota immediately knocks him "cold," and, ashamed of his bargain with Daisy, grimly escorts her to the door. The next day he tells the men that if they don't accompany him to church he will close.

Harley Hennage, a gambler, loves Marie but remains silent when he realizes that she is in love with Oliver Corblay, a prospector. After Corblay and Marie marry, Harley moves to the distant town of San Pasqual and does not see his old sweetheart until her husband is killed while staking a claim in the desert.

Private Frank Austin, imprisoned for striking Colonel Kincaid, who was abusing a lame newsboy, escapes to Colorado. Meanwhile, Latin professor Thomas Doyle, his wife Mary and sister Kitty also move to Colorado because of Mrs. Doyle's health and are persuaded by Kincaid to buy a ranch that is worthless because it has no irrigation. While Mrs. Doyle gets well and Doyle's funds run out, Austin, on land bordering Doyle's, strikes gold and is blackmailed by Kincaid to let him have a controlling interest.

Billy rescues a child and returns her to her mother. When the husband returns and discovers that the savior of his child is a wanted outlaw, he's faced with a moral crisis.

Broncho Billy, the sheriff, is in love with a girl, but another man wins her affections and marries her. He is a worthless sort of fellow, and when Broncho sees him in the saloon, drinking with an outlaw, he gives the bartender orders to sell him no more liquor. This causes a fight, but peace is soon restored.

Bill Evers, a gambling house keeper, is in reality the "Desert Scourge," an outlaw.

Wall street broker Barry Dale is systematically ruined financially by his alleged best friend Richard Marvin . This Marvin does so that he can win Dale's wife Virginia away from the discredited broker. Dispirited and disillusioned, Dale heads to the West for a fresh start in life. Unfortunately, he soon develops the reputation as a coward, but he manages to dispel this by becoming a notorious outlaw, reasoning that highway robbery is not all that different from Wall Street chicanery.

While on a hunting trip Tom encounters some bootleggers.

A sheriff and his posse shoot it out with a gang of robbers headed by Bad Jake Kennedy. The surviving robber, Buckshot John, won't tell where the gang's loot is hidden and gets 30 years in prison. Halfway through his sentence he "gets religion" and in order to save his soul, decides to tell where the gang has hidden its stash of gold. However, a phony clairvoyant, The Great Gilmore, finds out about John's intentions and tricks him into revealing where the gold is. When John finds out what happened, he decides to break out of prison and take care of matters himself.

Jack and Dolly, his sister, live together in the west. On Jack's birthday, Dolly presents him with a peculiar ring. The brother and sister attend a masquerade ball that evening, each dressed in the other's clothes. Dolly, being taken for a man, meets Big Bill, a new ranchman, and he offers her a cigar, which she tries to smoke. Jack sees her in distress, and coming to her rescue, is introduced as the sister. The next morning Jack leaves to look over his stock. While riding through the sage brush, he takes a shot at a rabbit and the bullet lands near the spot where a cattle rustler is plying his unlawful trade. The cattle rustler and Jack meet. The former believes that Jack tried to kill him and a fight follows. Jack is killed.

Arizona range rider Lon Gilchrist helps stagecoach passengers fight off attacking Apaches. After rescuing a baby and binding her bleeding forehead with his handkerchief, Lon receives a reward that allows him to buy a ranch. Many years later, the rescued child, Lizzie Mayberry, is a waitress in a cheap restaurant, where she meets Lon, who, now wealthy, courts and marries her. Because he is so busy, Lon has his friend Del Beasley look after her. After a misunderstanding, Lizzie has Del take her to the railway station. Thinking that they left together, Lon pursues them.

Having struck it rich, two prospectors return to town, where one of them is to be married while the other will serve as best man. But on the eve of the wedding, the best man turns out to be the worst of the two, and elopes with the bride-to-be. Though heartbroken, the jilted bridegroom shrugs philosophically and returns to gold-mining. Several years later, the wife dies, and her husband becomes a high-rolling gambler.

Avis and Franklin Hilliard are the spoiled, overbearing children of a wealthy father who has just died. Lord Cecil Oakleigh, a fortune hunter, is Avis's fiancée, although there is no love between them, he marrying her for her fortune and she marrying him for his title. Mr. Hilliard has left the superintendent of his mine in full charge of his fortune.

Pinto Ben is a pink-nosed cow-pony. A hundred head of cattle are rounded up for beef to be shipped alive to Chicago. Ben and his master, with Segundo Jim, are put in charge. In the Chicago stockyards, men who don't know range-bred cattle from a herd of mountain goats, calmly inform Jim and Ben's master that the steers are to be driven into the big pen. At the same instant two or three stock hands run behind the herd and begin shouting and waving their arms to start the cattle. The beasts, a thousand strong, with horns and hoofs beating the air, bellowing their rage, glaring with bloodshot eyes, thunder into the chute. The two men in front prepare for their death ride. Suddenly Pinto Ben flattens himself before a high, iron-bound gate, and leaps. The pony cleans the gate. The great wave of scorching breath falls back on the other side. Ben's master finds himself sitting on the ground, the head of his dying horse in his lap.

In Snake River, Buck Farley breaks up a fight staged by crooked Chicago Saloon owner Johnson, who set-up alcoholic Jake Frazer as the town's sheriff as a joke. Johnson pretends to have saved Buck's life (when in reality he was planning on shooting him), which indentures Buck to Johnson, and Buck becoming his deputy. Buck also starts to have feelings for Jake's daughter, Emma, who has also rebuffed the advances of Johnson. Johnson uses a ruse to get Buck searching for some allegedly stolen horses in the desert, but Buck forces Johnson to accompany him (after he realizes that Johnson is not on the up and up, and also has designs on Emma)...

Rev. Horace Brightray, pastor of a New England village church, is ordered by his physician to seek another climate. He goes to Agua Caliente, where he attempts to hold services in the hotel dining room, but nobody attends excepting the hotel clerk and maid, and a dance hall girl, Bubbles. The proprietor of the Legal Tender saloon is very bitter toward Horace and commands them not to attend services. Horace is soon out of funds and is ejected from the hotel. Sick and hopeless, he goes to the Legal Tender and slaps Frosty across the face with his hat, feeling sure it will mean death to him.

Cash Parrish, a bandit, is betrayed to the sheriff by his pal, Jud Ross, who covets Parrish's treasure and his wife, Rose.

Tom promises his sweetheart, Vicky, that he will stop drinking. He falls in with boon companions, however, and in a saloon brawl, he accidentally shoots Ned, his pal. The sheriff and Vicky's brother find that Ned was only stunned by the bullet. At a rodeo, Tom meets the sheriff, who arrests Tom for the shooting of Ned.

Silent western starring Tom Mix

A romantic melodrama set in old California.