Cole Younger, Gunfighter

I've mentioned before my feeling that a lot of the two-reeler stuff that the studios were putting out in the 30s and 40s moved and became episodic TV once TV hit in the 50s. I think the same more or less holds true for B movies, although there was still some B stuff getting put out. A good example of this is Cole Younger, Gunfighter

Although Younger is the title character, the movie is just as much about another character, Kit Caswell (James Best). He's living in Texas circa 1873, a time when Reconstruction is still going on and there are a lot of carpetbaggers governing the former Confederate states through what is effectively military occupation, something that would go on for another four years. In the case of Texas, the governor has a separate police force known as the Bluebellies, that a lot of the Texans resent.

Casell hangs an effigy of a Bluebelly, which in theory ought to be perfectly legal what with the First Amendment, but he also makes the mistake of committing some real violence, which brings him and his friend Frank Wittrock (Jan Merlin) in contact with the Bluebellies. It's something that doesn't go well, and eventually Kit tells his girlfriend Lucy (Abby Dalton) that he and Frank are going to have to make a run for it.

They head south, and the next morning the find a lone man sleeping peacefully. Frank recognizes the man as Cole Younger (Frank Lovejoy), the notorious outlaw who ran with the James Gang and in real life I don't think ever made it down to Texas. Frank wants to shoot him, but Kit knows better, which ultimately results in Frank heading back home and Kit and Cole becoming about as much friends as would be possible.

Frank decides once he gets back home that he's going to rat Kit out, because he wants Kit's girlfriend for himself. So Frank basically frames Kit for murder, one that's going to come down to a case of he said/he said. Along the way, there are some twists and turns as Kit and Cole join a cattle drive on the way to Abilene, Kansas, where Kit is hoping Lucy will show up.

Cole Younger, Gunfighter is a movie that's not notably bad by any stretch of the imagination. But as I implied in the opening paragraph, it's also the sort of thing that was being done on episodic TV by the time (1958) that this movie was released. One thing the movie does have that TV didn't in those days is color and wide-screen. The story is ahistorical although that doesn't have to be a problem; other than that it's also pedestrian and formulaic.

Still, I think fans of westerns could find much worse ways to spend 80 minutes of their life. The movie is available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.