CHARLOTTE AUSTIN in PAWNEE (1957)

Republic Pictures was truly ailing when the company released Pawnee. But that doesn't even come close to explain, let alone excuse, the amount of stock footage used. Now stock footage was of course a part of the moviegoing experience in the so-called golden age of Hollywood and no one was much bothered if shots of warring Indians leaving their camp some times in the late silent era ended up in a 1940s program western. You just knew that a Buster Crabbe Billy the Kid oater from bottom feeder company PRC could not afford any kind of spectacle and you still had old Buster shooting it out with the outlaws, few in number as the may have been. But when most of the action is clearly from a different movie with the principal cast merely reacting to the goings on, well that is just too much. You really cannot get excited about a group of actors on a soundstage green set attempting to act frightened by an attack of hollering Pawnee warriors that clearly happened far, far away from Studio City. But that is excactly what happens in Pawnee. In fact poor Charlotte Austin, playing Pawnee squaw Dancing Fawn, never enjoyed any fresh air at all but was instead cooped up on the green set for the duration.

Miss Austin otherwise came with perfect outdoorsy credentials being the daughter of legendary crooner Gene Austin of "Carolina Moon" fame who had even headlined his own, albeit very low budget, western, 1938's Songs and Saddles. Yet despite all that, Charlotte Austin is today best remembered for a cheesy horror movie, The Bride and the Beast, released a year after Pawnee. 

                                            

BELINDA LEE in BLACKOUT (1954)

Burgeoning British film company Hammer made a deal with low budget Hollywood producer Robert L. Lippert to distribute Hammer products in America. Blackout, filmed at the studio's later so famous Bray location, was the first to be produced under the deal. Starring Hollywood's Dane Clark, this whodunit with noirish overtones was too complicated for its own good but was a fine showcase for blonde Belinda Lee, a former Rank organization protégée who never quite managed to compete with England"s number one Marilyn Monroe rival, Diana Dors. Miss Lee instead left a less than satisfying career in the UK  in favor of peplum stardom in Italy. She was apparently "going Hollywood" when tragically killed in a car crash en route from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. She was 26.

The illustration, a trading card, was one of the first items in my collection and dates back to around 1965. 

                                      

MARIS WRIXON in HIGHWAY 13 (1949)

                                     

Due to another fine book from Bearmanor Media, Mark Thomas McGee's Robert L. Lippert treatise "Talk's Cheap, Action's Expensive" (2014), I've become quite devoted to the Lippert oeuvre of neat little thrillers like Highway 13, which comes with a compact little mystery about an endangered, and endangering, trucking company. With a cast that includes Lippert regulars Robert Lowery, Michael Whalen and Lyle Talbot and fine production values courtesy of rented sets at Republic Pictures, Highway even comes with a few surprises along the way and splendid performances by old timer Clem Bevans and a surprisingly chilly Maris Wrixon. The latter, a former Warner Bros. starlet who never quite managed to claw her way out of B Movies, turns in an exemplary femme fatale performance that nearly, but only nearly, secures the film its recent "Forgotten Noir" status.

(Illustration: Michael Whalen, Robert Lowery, Maris Wrixon and Tom Chatterton.)

WANDA HENDRIX in STAGE TO THUNDER ROCK (1963)

Ever since I became a fan of Wanda Hendrix in my extreme youth - I'll just let that extremely weird statement sink in - I have wanted to see this, her final Western. Thanks to Amazon Prime, my wish finally came through. But what a disappointment. Not regarding the movie itself (more on that below) but the erstwhile Mrs. Audie Murphy enjoys less than five minutes of screen time as Scott Brady's blonde (!) wife, leaving the remainder of Stage to Thunder Rock in the otherwise capable hands of Marilyn Maxwell.

Anybody who loves Classic Hollywood in general and Classic Hollywood Westerns in particular owes a Thank You to veteran producer A. C. Lyles for his series of, well, "geriatric" westerns featuring fading stars of the past. In addition to the Misses Hendrix and Maxwell and Scott Brady, Thunder Rock also resurrects Barry Sullivan, Allan Jones, John Agar, Keenan Wynn, Robert Lowery and, riding shot gun on the eponymous conveyance, Rex Bell, Jr., and the result is a very well acted compact little oater that holds up very well. The aforementioned performers hung around this long for a reason: they were just plain good competent actors. And none better than the film's true revelation: Lon Chaney, Jr. Playing Marilyn Maxwell's (and Elvis movie starlet Laurel Goodwin's) henpecked paw, Chaney may have been down in his cups while filming (he is literally carrying around said cup for most of the film), but the old trooper creates a remarkably realistic depiction of a relay station operator. But poor Wanda Hendrix, who, we can only hope, enjoyed the trip to the film's Simi Valley location, is wasted in a nothing role.

(Illustration: Scott Brady saying goodbye to wife Wanda Hendrix and poor blind daughter Morgan Brittany.)