Phantom Ranger

"Government Man Disappears" blares the huge headline of a New York City newspaper. The missing man is John St. Polis, an engraver from the mint. He's being held by counterfeiters who force him to make phony money. He's engraved the town he's being held in on the plates, so his daughter, Suzanne Kaaren heads on down and gets a job as an entertainer with a Mexican accent. Meanwhile, the FBI sends one of their agents who knows "The West", Tim McCoy. He masquerades as a bandit who holds up the bad guys, which endears him to them.

It's nowhere near as bad as that, but it is a pretty barebones B western, with lots of shooting, horse riding, and the occasional musical interlude. McCoy had gotten his start in the movies as liaison with the local Indians on THE COVERED WAGON. He wrangled this into a series of B westerns for MGM. His contract was dropped, so he went to Universal, and then to various Gower Gulch production companies. He gave up the movies to return to the Army during the Second World War.

Besides being an army officer, McCoy was an actual westerner, with a claim to having the fastest draw of any movie cowboy - an editor checked and found he could draw and fire in six frames, a quarter of a second. He could speak several Indian languages, could use Indian sign language, ran working ranches and disdained horses, saying "I've never been sentimental about my horse. The horse doesn't give a damn about you. If you want to know the truth, horses are dumb." He died in 1978, aged 86.