The Carson City Kid

This was one of Roy Rogers better B westerns for Republic Pictures. The plot has Roy as a good/badman known as the Carson City Kid. But he's only doing this because he's on a manhunt. Roy's figuring the outlaw guise will afford him better intelligence about the guy he's after.

The trail's taken him to Sonora where he runs into such diverse people as Marshal Gabby Hayes, Pauline Moore, Noah Beery, Jr., and another B picture cowboy, Bob Steele. All of them give a good account of themselves.

Especially Steele as the saloon owner with a number of nefarious sidelines. In B films Steele was usually a good guy. Here he's more like the Steele we saw in such classic Humphrey Bogart films as The Big Sleep and The Enforcer.

Roy only gets one song in this film, a forgettable duet with his leading lady. He hadn't met Dale Evans yet, so he was paired with all kinds of female co-stars at this point in his career. Of course none had the screen or otherwise chemistry Dale and Roy had together.

Fans of the Cowboy King will like it and others will also.

The Carson City Kid is a "B" western to be sure, however, this one is a cut above the average.

Rogers had not yet evolved into the the yodeling/singing hero of the range. At this stage of his career, the studio was not casting him as himself but as "good" bad guys. In fact in this picture he sings only one song and that is a duet with the heroine.

What sets this picture apart is the excellent supporting cast. First, we have Gabby Hayes playing the Marshal and Noah Beery Jr. as Arizona who is befriended by Roy along the way. Heading up the villains are Bob Steele and the venerable Hal Taliaferro. Even Yakima Canutt turns up in an unbilled bit as the bartender. Steele always made a better villain than hero and in my humble opinion, takes the picture away from Rogers.

To be fair, Roy was just getting started and didn't do that bad of a job. The Carson City Kid remains one of Roy's better early westerns.

Roy Rogers is The Carson City Kid, a notorious outlaw. Actually, no, it's largely he just has the reputation. He's been trailing the man who killed his brother, and has concluded it's saloon owner Bob Steele, who has just hired him as a guard. Marshall Gabby Hayes deputizes him, in case he needs to kill anyone. Meanwhile, Steele has just cheated miner out of the gold he has mined, and has proposed to saloon singer Pauline Moore, who turns him down. So Steele fires Miss and Rogers, leading to the conclusion.

The ending is a bit rushed. That might be the way it was originally released, or perhaps the four minutes cut off the original for the version I saw helped make sense. Miss Moore and Roy each sing one song, Trigger gets only a couple of minutes of screen time, and there's a well-timed horseback chase towards the end, sure to please oater fans. The story is certain more nuanced than usual for B westerns, because Roy Rogers was a rising singing cowboy star, and he and Steele get to do a little more acting than they would have down in Gower Gulch. Director Joe Kane directs this just a mite leetle too fast, as Gabby would say, but it's a decent way to spend just under an hour.

Rodgers holds up mail-lines looking for bad guy Bob Steele, in order to settle an old score. Along the way, he tangles with lawman George "Gabby" Hayes and tries to protect young, naive miner Noah Beery Jr., whom Roy's partner (!) and Steele set their thieving sights on.

A great role for Roy, this has a great, above average cast and an irresistible chance to see Rodgers going up against fellow Saturday matinée star Steele (who always looked more like a heavy than a hero) in a rare villainous turn.

A better than average script, that knows what buttons to push and a quick pace also go a long way in helping make this Republic Pictures production worth watching.

The only things that disappoint is the abrupt conclusion and the half-hearted nature of songs.

The Carson City Kid goes after a tin horn gambler who murdered his brother during a shady card game. After finding the gambler, the Kid finds that he has not changed his ways and is out to cheat and frame a pal of the Kid's. Carson must stop this nefarious scheme and keep his own hide intact at the same time while also wooing the girlfriend of the sneaky tinhorn. Good western.