Battling Marshal (1948)

Sunset Carson, Lee Roberts, Pat Starling, Richard Bartell, Al Terry ... see more  , Donald Gray , Forrest Matthews , Jack Baxley , Pat Gleason , William Val

Produced in 1947 by Oliver Drake and Walt Mattox's Yucca Pictures Corp., the extremely low-budget Battling Marshal starred former Republic cowboy Sunset Carson in the twilight of his screen career. Ca... read more rson, his horse, Cactus Jr. (who received co-star billing), and sidekick Lee Roberts arrive in Quarzville, a town suffering under a smallpox scare. But as Sunset and friends learn, the nonexistent epidemic is the invention of crooked lawyer John Martin (Pat Gleason) and a local mining engineer turned "doctor" (Richard Bartell). The villains have created the false scare in order to take over the Jeffers ranch, where they have discovered a gold vein. Aligning himself with old man Jeffers' adopted grandchildren (Al Terry and Pat Starling), Sunset not only brings the villains to justice but also finds time to warble "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" by Harry von Tilzer. Produced in 16 mm and away from the usual Gower Gulch circles, the four Yucca Carson oaters were released between 1948 and 1950 by Astor Pictures, a sort of graveyard for the final independent B-Westerns. For all intent and purposes, Battling Marshal brought the curtain down on Sunset Carson's screen career. Late in life, Carson co-produced and hosted a series of B-Western revivals for a South Carolina public television station. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi