A Rider of the Plains

Outlaw Blackie Saunders and his young partner, Sandy, arrive in the small frontier town of Indian Springs to pick up trail supplies. The town's most respected citizen, Parson Jim Wallace, is one of Blackie's former "associates," who is now reformed and has made a new life for himself. When morally outraged citizens attempt to remove the impressionable Sandy from Blackie's custody, the Parson tries mollifying them. This task becomes all but impossible when a crooked deputy robs the express office and Saunders is suspected of the theft.

Some "B" Westerns of the early talkie era took advantage of the new infatuation with dialogue to tell stories that deviated from the genre's tried-and-true conventions by offering more complex characterizations - which were difficult to convey by pantomime alone. Tom Tyler was among the cowboy stars whose first sound pictures included some decidedly offbeat elements and situations. His reformed bad man role in A Rider of the Plains marks a welcome change from the usual cardboard heroics of earlier Tyler vehicles. He receives strong support from character actor Ted Adams, normally cast as a heavy and remarkably effective here as the parson with a past.

Produced by Trem Carr, this enjoyable B-Western featured the strapping Tom Tyler, a cowboy performer who historically worked well with children. The child in this case was freckled Andy Shuford, a tough little boy rider. Little orphaned Sandy is adopted by a reformed outlaw (Tyler, of course), but when the townsfolk discover Tyler's true identity they conspire to take the tyke away from him. The express office is robbed and Tyler is the obvious suspect. He is provided with a seemingly airtight alibi by the kid, who swears to have seen two of Tyler's enemies commit the crime. After the real culprits have been apprehended, young Sandy confesses that he never really saw anything but only "guessed correctly." Although based on an original screenplay by Wellyn Totman, RIDER OF THE PLAINS bore a certain resemblance to the same year's The Sheriff's Secret, a Robert J. Horner misfire starring Jack Perrin.