Wed 10 Mar 2021
A Western Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: LIGHTNIN’ BILL CARSON (1936).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[7] Comments
LIGHTNIN’ BILL CARSON. Puritan, 1936. Tim McCoy, Lois January, Rex Lease, Harry Worth, Karl Hackett, John Merton, Lafe McKee, and Ed Cobb. Written by George Arthur Durlam and Joseph O’Donnell. Directed by Sam Newfield. Available on YouTube here.
A real cheapie from the brother-act of producer Sigmond Neufeld and director Sam Newfield, just before they settled in at PRC. But this one has a little something extra.
Not much, mind you, but a little. Lightnin’ Bill Carson still bears all the earmarks of desperate penury: bad-script, bad acting, shoddy sets and slip-shod continuity. The dross is leavened somewhat by the assured presence of Col. Tim McCoy, and a bit of imaginative nomenclature: at various times, McCoy’s Lightnin’ Bill Carson comes up against the colorfully-monickered likes of Silent Tom Rand, “Stack†Stone, Breed Hawkins, and the Pecos Kid, played by veterans John Merton, Harry Worth and Rex Lease with easy familiarity.
The plot, if you can call it that, undulates loosely around lawman Lightnin’ Bill and his uneasy relationship with an unlucky gambler called the Pecos Kid (Rex Lease.) When the townsfolk of San Jacinto call on the services of Lightnin’ Bill, he arrives to find Pecos already in the employ of local dress-heavy “Stack†Stone (Karl Hackett) who maintains a cottage industry of robbing stagecoaches.
It all plays out as expected, but scenarists Durlam and O’Donnell ring in some disquieting elements, starting with a frontier Cassandra (Lois January) who sees Death in the cards — she can’t say whose, but Pecos keeps turning up the Ace of Spades. Later on, an honest, upright Sheriff lynches an innocent man, a solid citizen goes on a killing spree, and our hero must set things right in a final shoot-out that seems more like a ritual killing.
I’m not going to make any big claims for Lightnin’ Bill Carson. Fans of old cheap Westerns will enjoy it, others will wonder why. But the glimmers of thoughtful writing that peek through the sagebrush fascinate me.
March 10th, 2021 at 1:19 pm
Love that hat!
March 10th, 2021 at 4:15 pm
Says the TCM website:
“This was the first of nine ‘Lightning Bill’ Carson films starring Tim McCoy and directed by Sam Newfield that were made between 1936 and 1940. Except for this picture, all the films in the series were produced or presented by Sam Katzman for Victory Pictures Corp. Basil Dickey wrote the original story or screenplay for three of the film’s in the series, and collaborated with Joseph O’Donnell on screenplay for the last in the series. Ben Corbett appeared as ‘Magpie’ in six of the Victory films (his character is unidentified in the remaining two). Ted Adams appeared in all of the Victory films, and Forrest Taylor appeared in seven. Joan Barclay co-starred with McCoy in three of the films, and Joyce Bryant co-starred in two.”
March 10th, 2021 at 7:05 pm
Tim McCoy had an imposing screen presence and not incidentally, well compensated. Whatever was wrong with his films, it was simple to keep watching with him up there.
March 10th, 2021 at 7:55 pm
McCoy was still going strong long after his screen career ended, long enough to garner some attention when nostalgia for the early Westerns started to appear and some were surprised to find McCoy was still alive and healthy.
His silent films and early talkies, and even some of his later work still showed the same twinkle in those icy eyes (he still looked good in the saddle in AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS as a cavalry officr), and his presence could still command the eye.
Even in these low budget outings there was a sense of quality to the McCoy films, a sense of something more, maybe just because there was something more to McCoy.
In addition he seems from his biography to have been a genuinely good man who did excellent work for Native Americans before taking up his screen career. Perhaps what we see in his films is something of that genuinely good man coming through on the screen.
March 12th, 2021 at 2:11 am
You can never kiss a pretty girl with a great big hat on. Amateurish mistake top of the list #1.
March 12th, 2021 at 9:33 am
Lazy George — You speak from experience?
March 12th, 2021 at 11:38 am
Fun Facts:
In 1946, as he was dialing down his movie career, Col. Tim McCoy married for the second time, to a Danish-born journalist named Inga Arvad.
Miss Arvad had been in the USA since the ’30s, working out of Washington, D.C.
While in the Nation’s Capital, she’d made a considerable social life for herself – including a liaison with an aspiring politician named John F. Kennedy.
This relationship attracted the attention of J. Edgar Hoover, who as you might expect, disapproved – largely because while she was still living in Europe, Miss Arvad had had a passing acquaintance with Adolf Hitler.
Mr. Hoover, for reasons of his own, developed an obsession with Miss Arvad, which long outlasted her involvement with JFK – not to mention her subsequent US citizenship, and her marriage (and eventual family life) with Col. McCoy, which lasted from 1946 through to her passing in 1973.
Late in his own life, Tim McCoy gave an interview in which he revealed that, although he’d always been an active Republican, he no longer considered himself so.
Col. McCoy cited Nixon and Watergate as his main reasons for changing his mind – but sometimes I wonder if Mr. Hoover’s vendetta against his long-time wife might have played a role in his thoughts …
Something to think about, no?
(Especially these days …)