YOUNG BUFFALO BILL. Republic, 1940. Roy Rogers, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Pauline Moore, Hugh Sothern, Trevor Bardette, Steve Pendleton, Wade Boteler. Director: Joseph Kane.

THE KID RIDES AGAIN

THE KID RIDES AGAIN. PRC, 1943. Buster Crabbe, Al “Fuzzy” St. John, Iris Meredith, I. Stanford Jolley, Glenn Strange, Charles King.

   Here are a couple of B-westerns that play fast and loose with history, and if you can’t trust B-westerns, who can you trust? In the first of these two films, Roy Rogers plays Buffalo Bill Cody as a young scout who comes to the aid of an aged Spanish don with a ranch outside of Sante Fe. A crooked surveyor is trying to cheat him out of his land.

   In the second, Buster Crabbe adds another entry to a long list of movies in which he played Billy the Kid. In this particular alternative universe, Billy is a misunderstood gunfighter who’s really good if people would only leave him alone. This time around he helps a bank owner withstand a run on his bank after thieves have robbed it.

YOUNG BUFFALO BILL

   In both cases there are young girls involved who catch both heroes’ eyes. Pauline Moore plays the Don Regas’s granddaughter to whom Roy is immediately attracted; and Iris Meredith is Joan Ainsley, the daughter of the banker in The Kid Rides Again.

   Another point of similarity between the two movies is that both Bill Cody and William Bonney have goofy sidekicks. Roy has Gabby Hayes, who resents (often) being called an old goat and is called Gabby for good reason; and Buster Crabbe has Fuzzy St. John, the skinny old galoot prone to scratching his addled head and sidesplitting pratfalls. (Well, I thought they were funny.)

Iris Meredith

   Neither plot line needs an in-depth analysis. The production values in Roy�s movie are the greater ones, but if you’re not a fan of singing cowboys, you already know to avoid his films. Roy’s probably also a better actor (earnest and young) than Buster Crabbe, but the Billy the Kid movie has something that Bill Cody doesn’t, and that’s Iris Meredith.

   What a beautiful woman! I’m comparatively new to the world of the serials of the 1930s and 40s, so I’ve not seen her in her most famous roles, those being The Spider’s Web (1938), Overland with Kit Carson (1939) and The Green Archer (1940), not to mention dozens of westerns like this one, which as it turns out, was also her last.

   Looking down the list of movies she was in (on IMDB), she deserved better roles than she ever received. If she had a major part in an “A” film, I don’t see it.

Iris Meredith

   I’ve found two photos to show you, but neither one comes from The Kid Rides Again. The first one (above) shows how she looked as Nita Van Sloan in the pulp hero serial, The Spider’s Web. In the second one (seen to the right), she’s standing between Charles Starrett and Bob Nolan in Spoilers of the Range, Columbia, 1939.