Stagecoach Kid

 

To quote myself from this 2015 post, about Tim Holt's B-movies: "Holt technically played a different character in each movie. At least his name is different, though he dressed very similarly and nearly always has a Mexican/Irish sidekick named Chito Rafferty (played by Richard Martin.)"

So, essentially, Tim Holt plays the same guy in each movie, but with a different name and often a different occupation. Apparently, every alternate universe has a Chito Rafferty, but Tim Holt has a different (though very similar) identity in each of those universes. 

Chito Rafferty is apparently the keystone that holds the multiverse together. But I digress, don't I?

In Stagecoach Kid (1949), Tim is Dave Collins. He and Chito own a stage line. When they stop a robbery, they unknowingly become involved in a complex plot.

Aboard the stage is a wealthy local rancher, who is bringing his daughter Jessie home from San Francisco to get her to forget the man she thinks she loves. Jessie, though, is a spoiled brat who intends to ditch her dad and go back to Frisco on her own.

This soon involves her dressing as a boy, in a disguises that fools more people than it really should. 

Jessie, by the way, is played by Jeff Donnell, who took Jeff as her stage name because she was a fan of the "Mutt and Jeff" cartoons. Despite the boy's name, she was cute as a button. Before I was married, I often noted that some actresses were very pretty in a way that no woman after about 1950 ever achieved. Of course, now that I'm regularly exposed to Angela's goddess-like beauty, I don't notice such things any more beyond an academic level. Donnell was also a pretty good character actress, with an active career in movies and TV right up until her death in 1988.

Anyway, the stage robbers were actually trying to kill the rancher. They are working for the ranch's foreman (played by Joe Sawyer, who was always good in bad guy roles), who has been embezzling funds. The murder of the rancher was supposed to cover this up.

The henchmen actually make another try at the stage. The rancher isn't riding on it by this point, so they steal a shipment of bank money to cover their real purpose. Jessie, who is on the stage in her disguise, sees one of them without his mask on. This pretty much puts a target on her back. Dave (that's Tim Holt this time, remember) spends a big chunk of the movie protecting her. The going gets rough for Jessie, which is a predictable but still entertaining chance for her to lose her sense of spoiled entitlement. 

In the meantime, dissension amongst the bad guys adds to the overall tension in the story.

It is, as is typical of Tim Holt's Westerns, a strong story with great location photography, solid characters and a straightforward, well-constructed plot. 

I stumbled across a very informative and entertaining article about Holt's Westerns HERE.