Belle Starr's Daughter

Ruth Roman was TCM's Star of the Month back in November 2024, and as always, this gave me the opportunity to record some movies I either hadn't seen before, or had seen but had not yet done a blog post on. Among the former is an early film in Roman's career, Belle Starr's Daughter.

Belle Starr was a minor bandit who was killed in 1889 under circumstances that were never fully cleared up, leaving behind two children, including an adult daughter Rose (that's Ruth Roman). In this telling of the tale, Belle had retired to a place called Cherokee Flats, near a town called Antioch where she had a sort of truce with the town marshal: keep everybody out of Antioch, and we'll leave you alone. But Belle's second-in-command, Bob, nicknamed "Bitter Creek" (Rod Cameron) is not happy with this arrangement. He goes into town to rob the bank, a major no-no, and kills the old marshal.

Rose and Belle (Isabell Jewell) have no idea that any of this is happening. And when Bob returns to Cherokee Flats and Belle finds out what's happened, she's pissed. So Bob responds by killing her, which is really going to tick off Rose. Worse, Bob has burned the place down and puts the idea in Rose's head that perhaps it might be the new marshal, Tom Jackson (George Montgomery), who is responsible. After all, if the old marshal was killed, it's only logical that the new one would want revenge.

But Rose also has the suspicion that Bob isn't being completely honest, so she goes into town partly to investigate for herself and partly to try to start a new life as she didn't want to get involved in any violence. (In real life, Rose started a brothel, but needless to say Hollywood couldn't exactly show that since Rose is supposed to be the heroine here.) Rose meets Tom, and at first things are rather frosty. You can guess, however, that this is going to change along the way, although there's still the pesky little matter of the Production Code.

Worse for poor Rose is that Bob and his men show up. Bob is no dummy, and he figures out that Rose wants to go straight and is more than willing to turn him in. So Bob pretty much kidnaps Rose and forces her to ride with his outlaw gang. From here it's a fairly standard western until we get the conclusion in which the good guys win and the bad guys get what's coming to them.

Belle Starr's Daughter was another of those B movies that wasn't designed to be much more than entertainment -- it certainly doesn't have much in the way of historical accuracy -- but it succeeds in entertaining while being nothing terribly special or memorable. Roman didn't really have anything to be embarrassed about with the movie, but better things were certainly on the way for her.