Walloping Kid

William Barrymore is a prize fighter, but his father doesn't approve. So he ships Barrymore out west to manage his ranch. When he gets off the train, the hands mistake another man for him, so off they go, leaving Barrymore to investigate the unspecified mystery in peace. Adopting the name of an outlaw he saw on a poster, he makes friends with prospector Frank Whitson and his daughter, Dorothy Ward, wins the approval of the county by defeating a tank fighter, and solves the mystery of who shot the detective.

The copy I looked at wasn't in good shape, the sepia wash not adding to the clarity of the print. Decent copies of silent B westerns are tough to come by; even the ones fromt he 1930s are usually in poor condition. Still, Barrymore looks good riding a horse or with his shirt off, and Miss Ward is no pantywaist herself. She's happy trudging across the desert with her dad and a mule, grabbing an assaulter's guns, and clouting him on the ear. Considering the way in which B westerns in the 1930s settled into stereotypes, the 1920s examples are rather more interesting.

Barrymore was no relation to the well-known Broadway and movie stars. He came from Russia. Reportedly a Cossack member of the Tsar's household guard, he escaped prison under the Bolsheviks, came to the US and was made a cowboy star, because he could ride. His acting is good enough for fuzzy prints of medium shots and he looks like Mouskojine to me.