Carrying the Mail

Fred Parker is afraid he'll lose his mail contract after thirty years; he's been underbid. With a sigh, he send daughter Djarling back to school Meanwhile, bad guys Yakima Canut and James Sheridan figure on robbing the stage, which should convince the government to give them the contract.

Fortunately, Hal Talliaferro -- under the stage name of Wally Wales) and his horse Silver King are there to save the day. We know Talliaferro, under any name, is the hero of this story, because he wears an immense white hatbut the horse gives the best performance in this movie, racing dramatically into frame and rearing majestically.

There are a lot of troubles with full length B westerns in this period, including the lackadaisical editing, the slow entrances as people walk up to a door, open it, the camera cuts to show them entering the room and walking up to the other people; not to mention the five to ten minutes of the hero riding on his horse. There's also performers who speak their lines with no conviction, and half-witted 'comedy relief' meant to fill up a 58-minute runtime. I looked at a 20-minute cutdown of an originally 30-minute short. It had all these issues!

Still, there must have been a market for short westerns.Ten years later, Warners were doing cutdown of the Technicolor A westerns and shooting new footage to turn them into two-reelers.