Jiggs and Maggie Out West

Monogram's Bringing Up Father series, based on the popular comic strip by George McManus, hit a high point of sorts with 1950's Jiggs and Maggie Out West. Joe Yule Sr. (Mickey Rooney's father) and Rene Riano are perfectly cast as nouveau riche Jiggs and Maggie, who head thataway when Maggie inherits a goldmine. As usual, Maggie spends her time trying to climb the frontier social ladder, while down-to-earth Jiggs is more interested in finding a plate of corned beef and cabbage.

Ridin' the Outlaw Trail

Charles Starrett plays lawman Steve Forsythe in Ridin' the Outlaw Trail. Somewhere along the line, of course, Steve is obliged to don the mask of The Durango Kid, mysterious righter of wrongs. The "wrongs" in this instance include the theft of $20,000 in gold, and the "kidnapping" of a blacksmith's forge! Jim Bannon, who only a few months earlier had played the heroic Red Ryder, provides the villainy in this fast-paced "Durango Kid" entry

Trail to Laredo

Filmed at the Providencia Ranch (today's Forrest Lawn in Burbank, CA), this typical "Durango Kid" Western featured the Cass County Boys performing "Go West Young Lady" by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, in addition to series regular Smiley Burnette singing his own "It's My Turn" and "The Yodeler. This time, the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) is chasing down a gang of outlaws shipping stolen gold in crates marked "ring bolts," ably assisted by Smiley, a treasury agent working undercover as a house painter. Virginia Maxey supplies female interest...

The Great Jesse James Raid

The famed outlaw is talked into saddling up for one more bank robbery.

The Fighting Redhead

Red Ryder gets a telegram from his old friend Dan O'Connor asking for help in his fight against Faro Savage and his gang of rustlers. A gun dropped by Faro during a rustling raid makes Red and Sheila O'Connor, Dan's daughter, think they have ample proof against Faro but they are stymied by the law. Buckskin Blodgett and the Duchess, Red's aunt, find the body of O'Connor who was killed when Faro's men sent the sheriff out on a ruse. Sheila, discovered while rifling Faros office for evidence, escapes but not before she is recognized. Faro kill...

Nevada Badmen

The "badmen" of the title in this average western from Monogram are Waller, a greedy express agent and Banker Jensen, who conspire to separate Bob Bannon from the gold found on his property. Bob's brother Jim and his two pals Whip Wilson and Texas arrive too late to save Bob from the bad guys. Hoping to flush out the killer, Whip arranges to auction off the property.

Jack Slade

A young boy witnesses his father murdered by bandits and grows into adulthood vowing revenge.

Renegades

The daughter of a prominent citizen marries an outlaw's son.

Cowboy and the Prizefighter

Red Ryder KO's a fight racket with sidekick Little Beaver (Little Brown Jug) and a new friend.

Roll, Thunder, Roll!

Jim Bannon is back as enduring cowboy hero Red Ryder in Eagle-Lion's Roll, Thunder, Roll. As ever, Ryder's cohorts are Little Beaver and the Duchess, here played by "Little Brown Jug" and Marin Sais. This time, Ryder tries to prove that a series of cattle raids and ranch fires were not the handiwork of masked Mexican do-gooder El Conejo.

Ride, Ryder, Ride!

Riding the plains with Little Beaver and Buckskin Blodgett, Red Ryder encounters bandits trying to hold up the stagecoach carrying Libby Brooks, owner of the Devil's Hole newspaper

I Married Adventure

A 1940 Columbia Picture feature film, "I Married Adventure" stars Osa Johnson and closely follows her 1940 best-selling book of the same name. Osa portrays herself in studio-produced scenes which bridge the transition between actual documentary footage segments as the film recounts the Johnson's nine world expeditions to Africa, Borneo, and the South Seas. Jim Bannon, a Hollywod stuntman who lent his voice to many western's including Red Ryder, Don Clark, and Albert Duffy narrate this adventure classic that compiles the very best images from...

Canyon Raiders

Whip Wilson only gets to crack his trademark weapon once in this economic Western filmed in toto at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, CA. A government agent, Wilson arrives in the near ghost town of Tunis, where his friend is in trouble with a couple of horse thieves. The latter are also terrorizing a homesteader, Texas Milburn, and his wife, Ruth, and when the female sheriff Alice Long interferes, she finds herself taken hostage.

Wanted: Dead or Alive

Taggart and his men are breaking wanted outlaws out of jail and then killing them for the reward money. Marshal's Whip, Jim, and Texas have a plan to trap the gang. Whip poses as a wanted outlaw while Jim joins Taggart's gang and helps break him out. But there is trouble when gang member Mike, wanting a bigger cut, double-crosses everyone.

Miraculous Journey

The passengers and crew of an airplane are stranded in an unfamiliar jungle. Unknown to most of the survivors is a criminal among them who caused the crash.

Out of the Depths

Told in flashback, Out of the Depths strives to explain why its four male protagonists are bobbing around the Pacific in a lifeboat. The story proper begins as Captain Faversham (Jim Bannon) and his crew embark upon a secret mission which takes them into Japanese waters. The plan is to prevent a kamikaze attack against the American invading forces. Compelling in itself, the plotline isn't improved by arbitrary doses of misfire pathos and comedy relief. One of the sailors is played by Ken Curtis, later to gain TV fame as Festus on Gunsmoke.

Lawless Cowboys

Monogram's Whip Wilson western series was in its final year of existence when Lawless Cowboys hit the screen. Set in the contemporary West, the film casts Wilson as a Texas Ranger on the trail of a crooked gambling ring.

Sergeant Mike

A soldier becomes quite upset when he is transferred from the highly coveted machine-gun unit to the canine corps. He begins to change his opinion when he learns that his army dog Mike was a gift from an eight-year-old whose father was killed in the war. Now the soldier becomes committed to training Mike into the best army dog there ever was.

Stagecoach Driver

Jim Bannon and his partner own a stagecoach line. With the coming of the telegraph and the end of the Pony Express, two men plot to take over and get the new mail contract. When Jim's partner is murdered and Jim's name is written in the sand beside the body, Jim is arrested. At his trial Whip brings surprising evidence that clears Jim and the two plotters are soon arrested.