Best Western Movies of 1941

Young Matt Matthews, an Ozark Mountains moonshiner, hates the father he has never seen, who apparently deserted Matt's mother and left her to die. His obsession contributes to the hatred rampant in the mountains. However, the arrival of a stranger, Daniel Howitt, begins to positively affect the mountain people, who learn to shed their hatred under his gentle influence.

Two Virginians are heading for a new life in Texas when they witness a stagecoach being held up. They decide to rob the robbers and make off with the loot. To escape a posse, they split up and don't see each other again for a long time. When they do meet up again, they find themselves on different sides of the law. This leads to the increasing estrangement of the two men, who once thought of themselves as brothers.

Fast-talking con-man and grifter Candy Johnson rises to be the corrupt boss of Yellow Creek, but his wife's alcoholic father tries to set things right.

When Edward Creighton leads the construction of the Western Union to unite East with West, he hires a Western reformed outlaw and a tenderfoot Eastern surveyor.

To bring water to their valley, ranchers have raised money to build a dam. When that money is stolen, Allison suggests the ranchers sell their stock to a friend of his thereby getting the money needed to complete the dam. Roy has a clue that Allison was involved in the robbery and is out to get control of the valley. So Roy and the boys try to delay the sale of the stock while they look for proof against Allison.

A young woman arrives in the western town of Headstone and helps the locals outsmart a gang of outlaws.

San Antonio Rose is an amiably wacky mini-musical evenly divided between its "official" stars, The Merry Macs, and a strong cast of supporting clowns. Robert Paige plays roadhouse operator Con Conway, whose establishment is in danger of being squeezed out by its competition. Stranded entertainers Hope Holloway (Jane Frazee) and Gabby Trent (Eve Arden) decide to revivify Conway's establishment by staging an energetic floor show built around the talented Merry Macs. A rival club owner dispatches his two top hooligans Jigsaw Kennedy (Lon Chaney Jr.) and Benny the Bounce (Shemp Howard) to wreck Conway's club by posing as waiters, but the two stupes are easily cowed into submission--by the leading ladies!

Railroad agents frame a landowner who wont sell out to them.

The Saturday matinee crowd got two cowboy stars for the price of one in this lavishly budgeted western serial starring former singing cowboy Dick Foran and Buck Jones. The latter contributed deadpan humor to the proceedings, making Jones perhaps the highest paid B-western comedy relief in history. The two heroes defend the Death Valley borax miners from an outlaw gang headed by Wolf Reade. An extraordinarily strong cast -- for a serial, at least -- supported the stars, headed by Charles Bickford as Reade, Leo Carillo, Lon Chaney, Jr., and silent screen star Monte Blue. Leading lady Jeanne Kelly later changed her name to Jean Brooks and starred in the atmospheric RKO thriller The Seventh Victim (1943). Universal claimed to have spent $1 million on this serial and made sure to get their money's worth by endlessly recycling the action footage in serials and B-westerns for years to come.

The Rough Riders are after a gang of rustlers. Marshal Roberts is posing as a wanted outlaw, McCall is the Marshal supposedly after him, and Sandy is on hand as a cook. Roberts hopes his joining the gang will help bring them in.

Wild Bill Hickock and Cannonball help two young people in love and bring the murderer of Cannonball's father to justice.

Up-and-coming Universal leading man Robert Stack made his western-movie debut in Badlands of Dakota. Set in the Dakotas during the days of the Great Gold Boom, the story finds brothers Jim and Bob Holliday (Stack and Broderick Crawford) dukeing it out over the affections of pretty Anne Grayson (Ann Rutherford). While all this is going on, Wild Bill Hickok (Richard Dix) does his best to neutralize the local criminal element-and to fend off the romantic overtures of boisterous Calamity Jane (Frances Farmer).

Someone wants to kill Magpie Harper. Crash and Dusty arrive too late, Magpie Harper is allready dead.

Joe Weller has instigated a conflict over water rights between two ranchers. The idea is to have the ranchers do each other in then move in and take over. Hoppy and the good guys won't let this happen.

The beautiful owner of a silver mine in Mexico asks an employee for help when bandits keep robbing her shipments.

Whopper, Stan Bradford, and Smokey are delivering a herd of pack horses to telegraph lineman Jeff Corbin when intercepted by smooth-talking Cobb Wayne, who is in a deadly competition with Corbin.

The notorious outlaw Black Bart has reappeared and the Range Busters are sent to investigate. When they find that Black Bart is now a respectable citizen and that someone is impersonating him, they set a trap for the robber.

Gene returns from the East with new ranch owner Tom Bennett to find everyone's cattle dying. Blaine has reopened the copper mine and the waste is poisoning the water supply. While Gene is away Tom confronts the miners and a man is killed in the ensuing gunfight. Now Gene not only has the dying cattle problem but his ranch owner is in jail.

The Range Busters have a plan to get into the outlaw's hideout in Fugitive Valley.

Williams is out to stop Ellen Goreham from completing her road that is under construction and is using a man to impersonate Billy the Kid. When Billy sees the wanted posters and learns of the murders he supposedly committed, he sets out to find the imposter. His sidekick Fuzzy is there to help him but his friend Jeff, now a Marshal, is also after him.

A trio of cowboys infiltrate a cattle rustler's gang to seek vengeance for one of their fathers' murder.

After her family's mansion is burned down by Yankee soldiers for hiding the rebel leader Captain Sam Starr (Scott) Belle Shirley (Tierney) vows to take revenge. Breaking Starr out of prison, she joins his small guerrilla group for a series of raids on banks and railroads, carpetbaggers and enemy troops. Belle's bravado during the attacks earns her a reputation amongst the locals as well as the love of Starr himself. The pair get married, but their relationship starts to break down when Sam Starr lets a couple of psychotic rebels into the gang, leaving Belle to wonder if he really cares about the Southern cause.

Billy the Kid (Buster Crabbe) and his pal Jeff (Dave O'Brien) help their friend Fuzzy Jones (Al St. John) escape from jail, and the trio heads for Paradise Valley, where they find the Paradise Land Development Company, ran by Matt Brawley (Glenn Strange) and Jack Saunders (Charles King), is somewhat less than honest in their dealings with the homesteaders. They devise a plan to cause a split between Brawley and Saunders.

A Nevada rancher goes undercover for the U. S. Secret Service to help capture a gang of counterfeiters. Director David Howard's 1941 B-western stars Tim Holt, Marjorie Reynolds, Lee White, Eddie Kane, Ray Whitley, Helen Holmes, Glenn Strange, Byron Foulger, Eddie Dew, Tom London and Hank Worden.

Singing cowboy Tex Ritter and his sidekick, Slim Andrews, star in this musical Western about a couple of Texas Rangers who defend the citizens of a small territory from power-hungry outlaws. Villain Bradley Craven (Forrest Taylor) is determined to stop the election process that would allow the region to join the Union. Tex and Slim join a rancher and his daughter to stop Craven, with fearless Tex going undercover to ensure that justice is served.

Two ex-cons plan to kill the range rider marshal who sent them to prison and, when their plan fails, join forces with their former boss, a crooked saloon owner who has the same idea.

Buck Peters arranges for Hoppy, California, Johnny and other cowboys to go to the aid of friends whose cattle are being rustled. Hoppy and California locate the rustlers' hideout and join the gang by posing as outlaws themselves, but must find a way to let the rest of the posse know where they are.

Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founded railroad town of Laraville, Boss Jim Cork hopes to manipulate the sale of town lots to give him control, but Quaker schoolmarm Annie Morgan bags one of the key lots. Cork's lawyer Steve Lewis tries romancing Annie to get the lot back, finding her so overpoweringly liberated she leaves him dizzy. Still, Steve attains his nefarious object...almost...then has cause to deeply regret having aroused the sleeping giant of feminism!

Hoppy, California and Johnny come to the ranch of a friend and his daughter, disguised as dude detectives from the east, to investigate the disappearances, without a trace, of several herds of cattle.

The mayor has sent for a gunslinger who, though appearing to clean up the town, is really to be the mayor's means of taking the town over. When Roy and Gabby arrive in Tombstone, Roy is mistaken for the gunslinger. Just as Roy is ready to expose the mayor, the real gunslinger shows up.

Lopez is a bandit who has stolen the herd at Gil's ranch, so Hardy is about to foreclose. But Lucia has come back from New York and Gil is happy until he meets her husband, Morgan.

Tom and Fuzzy investigate a ghost town which, in this case, is supposedly haunted by real ghosts. The town is an outlaw gang's hideout, and they scare folks away to protect their mine.

The Younger brothers return to Missouri after the Civil War with intent to avenge the misdeeds of William Merrick, a crooked banker who has been buying up warrants on back-taxes and dispossessing the farmers.

When Jesse learns that Krager is cheating settlers, he and his gang rob trains to obtain money for them to purchase their land. Krager, finding a Jesse look alike in Burns, hires him to wreck havoc on the ranchers. When Jesse kills Burns he switches clothes and goes after the culprits.

The conflict between a railroader and a stage line owner is being aggravated by bad guys who are sabotaging both sides. Roy and Gabby mediate the conflict and expose the bad guys.

The Rough Riders are called in to help save Master's stage line. Taggart has his gang robbing the stages and shooting the drivers. When Buck drives the next stage, Taggart's men rob it and then make it look like Roberts is part of the gang. Written by Maurice Van Auken

When the showboat hits town, two men use the parade as a distraction to rob the bank. Their accomplice is Pop, the clown from the showboat. He leaves the money on the boat and tells his daughter Patsy to bring it to him at a later stop on the river. Gene's investigation of a bank robbery takes him to the showboat where he becomes a performer. Gene and Frog try to find the money while helping Patsy and her father.

The fifth film in the 24-film Range Busters series finds "Crash", "Dusty" and Alibi, on their way to Gopher City to become the town's peace officers. In the saloon, young Jimmy Rowell is losing money in a crooked poker game to saloon owner Bob Harmon. Harmon and his henchman Bart Gill are in reality wanted-outlaw brothers Jim and Ike Breedon seeking revenge against Jimmy and his school-teaching sister Sally as their father, a circuit judge in Nebraska, had sentenced their brother Bud to be hanged. Harmon involves Jimmy, because of his gambling debts, in a robbery of a rancher known to keep large amounts of money at his ranch. The Range Busters break up the robbery, Bart is killed, as is Rancher Fleming, and Jimmy is wounded but escapes. Harmon, setting a trap for Crash, tricks Sally and Jimmy to his hideout, and Crash follows them.

The Range Busters are investigating a gold robbery from the Denver Mint in a supposedly deserted ghost town, but they soon find they're not the only town resident with a nose for gold.

Billy Bonney is a hot-headed gunslinger who narrowly skirts a life of crime by being befriended and hired by a peaceful rancher, Eric Keating. When Keating is killed, Billy seeks revenge on the men who killed him, even if it means opposing his friend, Marshal Jim Sherwood.

When old rancher Cordoba's grandson is murdered, the Cisco Kid takes his place to find who's trying to take over the ranch.

The Mesquiteers return to Texas after the Civil War to find Army carpetbaggers fighting the local bushwackers. They quickly learn that Capt. Hawks and his men are the culprits and join up with Morgan and his men.

Falsely accused of murder, Billy is able to escape thanks to his pals. Once in Santa Fe, he meets once again the man who lied during the trial.

Cholita, after a long absence in Mexico City, is returning home to take up her duties as head of the rancho and, as everyone expects, to marry her childhood sweetheart José. Expectations are somewhat dashed as she shows up with Fernando to whom she is engaged. This makes José and Cholita's uncle more than a little bit put out as Fernando is not only not a Mexican, he is also a city slicker afraid of the country.

Roy and Gabby fight bad guys to save the town of Deadwood.

Roy is a newspaper reporter. He goes to Cheyenne to cover the activities of supposed bad guy Arapahoe Brown. Roy, of course, discovers who the real bad guy is.

The Cisco Kid is captured while keeping a rendezvous with cantina dancer Dolores but is released by his captor, the commander of a U.S. Army regiment, to help break up a kidnap ring. On his way to Las Tables with his pal, Gordito, he makes a stop at the Martinez Rancho, where they learn that his friend Carlos has been kidnapped, from his wife Marquerita. At the Crystal Palace Saloon, Cisco runs into an old girlfriend, Sally, who he once jilted for a tight-rope walker, but she doesn't betray him when the sheriff and an army officer enter searching for Cisco.

The Lone Rider Tom assumes a former outlaw's identity (Keno) to learn where the gold from his last big heist is hidden. He tries to get the info from Blackie Dawson, but Blackie gets suspicious.

It's "The Three Mesquiteers" again. Gaucho escapes from Braden's gang only to be shot by them. The Mesquiteers drive away the outlaws and take his money on to his mother. But Isabella thinks Tucson is her long lost son and they don't have the heart to tell her he is dead.