Best Western Movies of 1955

Will Lockhart arrives in Coronado, an isolated town in New Mexico, in search of someone who sells rifles to the Apache tribe, finding himself unwillingly drawn into the convoluted life of a local ranching family whose members seem to have a lot to hide.

This joyous celebration of frontier life combines tender romance and violent passion in the Oklahoma Territory of the 1900s with a timeless score filled with unforgettable songs. Rodgers and Hammerstein's hit Broadway musical.

Two brothers discharged from the Confederate Army join a businessman for a cattle drive from Texas to Montana where they run into raiding Jayhawkers, angry Sioux, rough terrain and bad weather.

Legends (and myths) from the life of famed American frontiersman Davy Crockett are depicted in this feature film edited from television episodes. Crockett and his friend George Russel fight in the Creek Indian War. Then Crockett is elected to Congress and brings his rough-hewn ways to the House of Representatives. Finally, Crockett and Russell journey to Texas and the last stand at the Alamo.

A former Union Army officer plans to sell out to Anchor Ranch and move east with his fiancée, but the low price offered by Anchor's crippled owner and the outfit's bullying tactics make him reconsider. When one of his hands is murdered he decides to stay and fight, utilizing his war experience. Not all is well at Anchor with the owner's wife carrying on with his brother who also has a Mexican woman in town.

A wandering cowboy gets caught up in a range war.

Western that starts when a man (Matt Dow) is mistaken as a train robber. After the town's sheriff shoots the kid he's riding with, Dow clears his name and ends up as the new sheriff. He romances a Swedish woman and settles in to a peaceful life only to find that the boy has a few secrets of his own.

A man in priestly robes, seemingly the long-awaited Father O'Shea, arrives at a little-frequented Catholic mission in 1947 China. Though the man seems curiously uncomfortable with his priestly duties, his tough tactics prove very successful in the Seven Villages, as around them China disintegrates in civil war and revolution. But he has a secret, and his friendship with mission nurse Anne (an attractive war widow) seems to be taking on an unpriestly tone.

Former buffalo hunter and entrepreneur Wyatt Earp arrives in the lawless cattle town of Wichita Kansas. His skill as a gun-fighter makes him a perfect candidate for Marshal, but he refuses the job until he feels morally obligated to bring law and order to this wild town.

A stranger comes to town looking for his estranged wife. He finds her running the local girls. He also finds a town and sheriff afraid of their own shadow, scared of a landowner they never see who rules through his rowdy sidekicks. The stranger is a town tamer by trade, and he accepts a $500 commission to sort things out.

The story of the peace mission from the US cavalry to the Cheyenne Indians in Wyoming during the 1870s. The mission is threatened when a civilian surveyor befriends the chief's son and falls for the chief's daughter.

A scout leading a wagon train through hostile Indian country gets involved with a Sioux chief's daughter.

Packaged and sold as an outdoor actioner, Many Rivers to Cross is as much a comedy as anything else. Robert Taylor stars as 18th century trapper Bushrod Gentry, who is himself entrapped into marriage by the spunky Mary Stuart Cherne (Eleanor Parker). Escaping his marital responsibilities (which were impressed upon him on threat of death), Gentry heads into the North Country, with Mary in hot pursuit. Hero and heroine spend the rest of the picture taking turns rescuing each other from hostile Indians. Some of the humor is predicated upon the wholesale slaughter of the "redskins", and as such is a bit hard to take when seen today. Supporting Taylor and Parker are Victor McLaglen as the heroine's burly father, and TV-stars-to be James Arness (Gunsmoke) and Russell Johnson and Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan's Island).

Three trappers become scouts for a cavalry captain who loses his fort to a hated colonel.

A gunfighter, stranded in the desert, comes across the aftermath of a stage robbery, in which all the passengers were killed. He takes one of the horses to ride to town to report the massacre, but finds himself accused of it. He also finds himself accused of the murder of the local banker, and winds up hiding in the basement of a house where the local sheriff, who is very sick, lives with his daughter.

Virginia, 1803. After the United States of America acquires the inmense Louisiana territory from France, a great expedition, led by William Lewis and Meriwether Clark, is sent to survey the new lands and go where no white man has gone before.

A Marshal must face unpleasant facts about his past when he attempts to run a criminal gang out of town.

A frontiersman and his son fight to build a new home in Texas.

In this film's version of the story, four of the Reno Brothers are corrupt robbers and killers while a fifth, Clint is a respected Indiana farmer. A sister, Laura, who has inherited the family home, serves the outlaw brothers as a housekeeper and cook. One brother is killed when they go after a bank, the men of the town appear to have been waiting for them…

When his ward seeks protection with rival cattleman John Stewart, embittered, jealous rancher Wick Campbell hires ten outlaws to help him seize power in the territory.

The first Texas bad man come running into town a million years B.C.

Santiago, a jolly modern bandito, has just lost his partner when he happens on the isolated farm of young Manuel and Maria Lopez...

A tough, womanizing high-stakes gambler known only as Tennessee has an uneasy relationship with Duchess, madam of a thinly-disguised bordello, and no other friends at all. But he's saved from murder by a lonesome cowpoke ('My friends call me Cowpoke'), in town to meet his fiancée Goldie on the steamboat. When she arrives, there's a mysterious undercurrent between Goldie and Tennessee, whose newfound friendship with Cowpoke is destined to be severely tried...

During the Texas War of Independence of 1836 American frontiersman and pioneer Jim Bowie pleads for caution with the rebellious Texicans. They don't heed his advice since he's a Mexican citizen, married to the daughter of the Mexican vice-governor of the province and a friend to General Santa Anna since the days they had fought together for Mexico's independence. After serving as president for 22 years, Santa Anna has become too powerful and arrogant. He rules Mexico with an iron fist and he would not allow Texas to self-govern. Bowie sides with the Texans in their bid for independence and urges a cautious strategy, given Santa Anna's power and cunning. Despite the disagreement between the Texicans and Bowie regarding the right strategy they ask Bowie to lead them in a last-ditch stand, at Alamo, against General Santa Anna's numerically superior forces.

To redeem his father's wrongdoings, Ericson joins the law to fight outlaws.

A part-Indian mining engineer looks for gold in an Arizona ghost town with his socialite bride.

A general-store keeper scares off bank robbers with a lucky shot, but they come back.

Capt. Harper's cavalry patrol returns to the fort to find it besieged by Ute Indians. The apparent cause is the recapture of Army traitor Brett Halliday, who deserted to the Utes in a previous war; but Brett has a different story. With capture imminent, the only chance for the surviving men (and one woman) is to boat down a wild, uncharted river, where Harper and Halliday must pull together, like it or not.

In bustling era of 19th-century Louisiana, sugar is as valuable as gold, and pirates like Lili Scarlet (Patricia Medina, Mr. Arkadin) will do anything to get it. After robbing Jules Tulane’s (John Dehner, The Boys from Brazil) estate of his crop, Scarlet takes over Tulane’s land debt and forces him to pay or go to prison. In exchange for postponing his debt, Scarlet allows Tulane’s son, André (Lex Barker, Robin Hood and the Pirates), to work as her servant. When André and Scarlet fall in love, it leads to jealous rage from Scarlet’s former paramour, expert swordsman Hugo (Warren Stevens, Forbidden Planet) — and when Hugo looks to raid the Tulane estate again, it is up to André and Scarlet to take him down and save the estate.

The Man from Bitter Ridge is a film directed by Jack Arnold. Jeff Carr, a special investigator, arrives in Tomahawk. His assignment is to discover who has been holding up the local stagecoach and is guilty for a series of killings that terrorize the town. Sheepman Alec Black is suspected by the local population but it is not long before Jeff realizes the man is innocent. Alec even becomes a good friend although he is in love with the same woman as him, Holly. Jeff will manage to arrest the real culprits but not before the latter try to compromise him down.

A circuit judge in the old west attempts to bring a suspected killer to justice. The judge runs afoul of the killer's rich cattle baron father in the process.

A pastor with a shady past moves into a rural town just after the Civil War.

When young Crazy Horse, of whom great things were predicted, wins his bride, rival Little Big Man goes to villainous traders with evidence of gold in the sacred Lakota burial ground. Of course, a new gold rush starts despite all treaties, and Crazy Horse becomes military leader of his people. Initial Indian victories lead to the inevitable result. Uniquely, all is told from the Indian perspective.

Still seeking revenge against ranch owner Tuck Ordway for publicly whipping him years earlier and breaking up his relationship with Ordway's daughter, cowboy Larry Madden plans to oust Ordway from his ranch by having his claim to the land declared invalid. Ordway's daughter Corinna, believing Madden to be the cause of the family's recent misfortunes, is unaware that the local saloon owner also has designs upon the Ordway holdings.

Rise, fall and execution of John Brown, fanatic abolitionist.

Jim "Tex" Wall, searching for the last of the three men who raped and killed his wife, joins a gang of cattle rustlers led by Hank Hays. Both Hays' outlaws and a rival gang headed by Heesman, have been hired as ranch hands by "Bull" Herrick, a cripple who owns a large cattle ranch and wants to get his large herd to market. He theorizes that the two gangs will be kept busy watching each other and neither will rustle his cattle. Helen has little faith in her brother's contrived plan, and hates and distrusts both groups. She begins to soften toward Jim, but abruptly changes when she sees a reward poster which says he has killed two men.

When the great potato famine hits Ireland, the diaspora begins as thousands emigrate. Among those leaving the Emerald Isle is Katie O'Neill and her husband, who decide that the promised land is South Africa and make their way there. Once there, they discover the hardships that are the reality of the homesteader experience.

In 1880, Osawkie, Kansas is feuding with rival town Mandaroon over which will be county seat, keeping the town's men away from home most of the time. The last straw is when Matt Davis feels compelled to go on a new foray on his wedding night; his bride Liza (just call her Lysistrata) takes teacher Cassie's advice and organizes a marital strike to make the men-folk stop their nonsense.

The Mayhew brothers flee from one Texas town to another as older brother Bill repeatedly attempts to keep younger brother Sam out of jail. Bill finally gives up on his younger brother and heads for Colorado. He gets a job and all is well until his brother shows up and takes a job that puts them on opposite sides of the law.

A third generation deputy sheriff doubts whether or not he has the guts for the job that killed both his father and grandfather. His doubts are re-enforced when three vicious gunmen arrive in town. From the original 35mm widescreen negative.

In 1915, an American adventurer joins the supporters of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.

a deputy U.S. Marshall pursue the gang of Ben Thompson after the murder of another marshall. Along with a bounty hunter and a half-breed woman they follow the trail into Apache territory.

Claudette Colbert plays Prudence Webb, who arrives in the wide-open town of Fort Ralston, Texas, to assume control of her late father's newspaper. Her first major print crusade is aimed at gambler Chris Mooney (Barry Sullivan), whom Prudence holds responsible for her dad's suicide. She then takes aim at a couple of crooked cattle barons (Ray Collins and Walter Sande), who'd like nothing better than to put Prudence out of the way for keeps.

In 1899 Alaska, miners have to protect themselves from a phony legal team trying to steal their gold claims.

A poor homesteader fights back when he's targeted for extinction by a powerful rancher and his gang of hired thugs.

Two former enemies find themselves together on a cattle drive and fighting marauding Apaches and Mexican bandits.

A disgraced Indian scout and his partner are hired to escort a wagonload of guns through Indian territory.

An American Rancher takes a small herd of Brahma bulls to Brazil where he has sold them for a small fortune. There, he finds himself in the middle of a range war......and in love. His concern, who are really his friends and who are his enemies

There's a new doctor in old Santa Fe, and it's Greer Garson. Director Mervyn LeRoy's 1955 western also stars Dana Andrews, Cameron Mitchell, Lois Smith, Walter Hampden, Pedro Gonzales-Gonzales, Earl Holliman, Adele Jergens, Robert Wilke, Frank DeKova, Nick Adams, Douglas Kennedy, Ralph Moody and Louise Lorimer.