Barbary Coast (1975), Way Out West (1937), Calamity Jane (1953), The Harvey Girls (1946), Wichita (1955), In Old Chicago (1937), Forbidden Trails (1941), Hello, Frisco, Hello (1943) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Saloon Owner movies.
Storyline: Set at the turn of the century, smooth talking con man Eddie Johnson weasels his way into a job at friend and rival Joe Rocco's Coney Island night spot. Eddie meets the club's star attraction (and Joe's love interest), Kate Farley, a brash singer with a penchant for flashy clothes. Eddie and Kate argue as he tries to soften her image. Eventually, Kate becomes the toast of Coney Island and the two fall in love. Joe then tries to sabotage their marriage plans.—Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>
Plot Keywords: promoter, saloon owner, singer, carnival worker, bartender, drunk, amusing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Boston pharmacist Tom Craig comes to Sacramento, where he runs afoul of local political boss Britt Dawson, who exacts protection payment from the citizenry. Dawson frames Craig with poisoned medicine, but Craig redeems himself during a Gold Rush epidemic.—Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
Plot Keywords: pharmacist, saloon owner, rancher, woman, brother, tense, somber ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It is 1892 in Death Valley and the yields from the Borax ore are getting so small that refining it is a losing proposition. The only thing that will save the company is a new deposit of high grade Borax, and Bill has a pouch of it that he got from a dead prospector that he buried on the road. Roper knows the value of the strike could be worth millions, but he needs Bill to find the prospectors' claim so they can record it and become rich partners. While Roper has no intention of cutting Bill in on the millions, he also has his eye on young Jean. Josie sees Roper for the scalawag that his is and it means trouble in Furnace Flat.—Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
Plot Keywords: saloon owner, daughter, clerk, prospector, friend, engaging, rousing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: After Sheriff Ken puts money in the safe, his brother Clem gives Rawhide the combination. With the money gone the disgruntled townsmen make Boots Sheriff and lock up Ken. Clem, now a prisoner of Rawhide, has a change of heart and sends Ken a message with the outlaw's location. Ken escapes by impersonating the saloon entertainer and rides for the hangout.—Maurice VanAuken <mvanauken@a1access.net>
Plot Keywords: sheriff, brother, saloon owner, outlaw, henchman, love interest, tense ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Roy Rogers (Roy Rogers, and not playing "himself" but playing a character named Roy Rogers), posing as The Carson City Kid, is seeking vengeance on Morgan Reynolds, the man who killed his brother. To find Reynolds in the gold towns, he systematically stops stagecoaches and goes through the mail, hoping to find letters addressed to Reynolds and thusly learn his whereabouts. Thus "The Kid" earns the reputation of a stagecoach robber, although he never takes anything, and the reputation is enhanced by the fact that he travels with Laramie (Francis McDonald), a notorious half-breed outlaw. A posse is about to capture them and Roy rides back to get Laramie whose horse has been shot, and Laramie repays the favor by slugging Roy and escaping on his horse Trigger. The posse rides by the unseen Roy and captures Laramie and, since he is riding the "Kid's" horse, take him to jail as being the "Kid." Laramie denies this and is told he will be free when he identifies the "Kid"; othewise he will hang. Roy rides into town, having deduced that the Morgan Reynolds he is looking for operates the Yellowback Saloon under the alias of "Lee Jessup" (Bob Steele) . As part of his plan to get evidence against Jessup, who also does not know his true identity, Roy takes a job as saloon shotgun guard, and meets saloon singer Joby Madison (Pauline Moore, in one of the truly great performances found in the B-western genre) and falls in love with her. This doesn't set well with Jessup, as he has plans of his own regarding Joby. Young gold miner Scott Warren (Noah Beery, Jr.), having hit his strike and heading for home with his fortune, comes into the Yellowback, talks too much about his stake, and is soon relieved of it in a crooked poker game by Jessup and friends. Scott, realizing he had been cheated, breaks into Jessup's office and, announcing he is the Carson City Kid, holds up Jessup henchman Harmon (Hal Taliaferro) and takes his gold and some letters and papers from the safe. Captured, he is taken before Laramie, who quickly identifies him as the "Kid" although he has never seen him before, in order to win the immunity promised him. Roy, masked as the Carson City Kid and speaking Spanish as the Kid did on the stage holdups, intervenes and at gunpoint, asks Jessup to identify what Scott has stolen from him. Besides the gold, Jessup unwittingly identifies as his own the latters and documents, which establish him as Morgan Reynolds. Reynolds meets justice and Roy is exonerated. ne fine little B-western with an excellent performance by George "Gabby" Hayes (as Sheriff Gabby Whittaker), before he had the character down as a sleep-walking exercise and was still revolving, and by, as mentioned, Pauline Moore, as a no-excuses heroine for being where she was doing what she did as a saloon entertainer.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: gunslinger, outlaw, prospector, saloon owner, singer, melodramatic, thrilling ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Bat Morgan is nearly shanghaied on his way to the gold fields of California. Instead he kills Shanghai Duck and becomes a hero in San Francisco's Barbary Coast. He winds up the rich owner of a saloon and gambling hall and is nearly lynched for a murder he didn't commit.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: sailor, saloon owner, newspaper owner, editor, politician, kidnapper, brash ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Comanche Creek, Colorado, 1875: Prisoner Jack Mason is broken out of jail by a gang of strangers. They use him in a robbery, then when the dead-or-alive reward is high enough, they shoot him and collect. The National Detective Agency, now knowing the gang's methods, arranges to have agent Bob Gifford jailed in Comanche Creek for train robbery. The gang takes the bait (not before Gifford catches the eye of lovely saloon-keeper Abbie). But how will the bait get off the hook?—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: detective, bandit, saloon owner, cowboy, criminal, rousing, thrilling ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Ann and Tom Howard arrive from the east to take up ranching. But Tom wants to return and forges his sister's name to the deed and sells it to Larson. Eddie knows there is silver ore in the area and that Lawson, who killed the Sheriff, is out to get all the ranches. When Lawson appoints himself the new Sheriff, Eddie organizes the ranchers to fight Lawson and his men.—Maurice VanAuken <mvanauken@a1access.net>
Plot Keywords: cowboy, sidekick, rancher, younger brother, sheriff, saloon owner, spirited ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: John Sands (Rod Cameron), formerly a Texas marshal whose talents with guns caused the law to turn against him,is a fugitive in Mexico, when he learns from "Dusty" Stewart (Cathy Downs)that his brother in the Texas panhandle, Billy Sands (John C. Champion), her fiancé and crusading newspaperman, his been mysteriously murdered in Sentinel, Texas. Despite the price on his head, Sands comes north to the panhandle to find his brother's killer.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: gunslinger, cowboy, gambler, outlaw, saloon owner, love interest, tense ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Eddie Dean arrives in the frontier town of Red Gap and finds that a crooked judge and a gang of hired henchmen. working for Brad Taggert, control the town. He becomes Sheriff after the town sheriff is shot, and aided by his sidekick, "Soapy" Jones and Cathy Jordan, daughter of a rancher murdered by the Taggert gang, sets out to restore law and order to Red Gap.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: gunslinger, saloon owner, judge, sheriff, deputy, rancher, engaging ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Eddie Dean and Soapy Jones foil an attempted stagecoach holdup designed to murder Circuit Judge Hilton, bound for Rawhide to restore law and order. The Judge and the other passenger, Parson Trimble, decide to put up at the ranch owned by Sherry Lynn, Eddie's sweetheart, and her mother Ma Lynn. They are waylaid again, but the outlaws are driven off, and Nevada, an undercover man for the Judge, allows one of captured men to escape so he can follow him to the gang hideout. The Judge also deputizes Eddie. Nevada gets in with the gang, led by Duke and Dad Dillon, and is given the assignment to kill the Judge, whose first act in Rawhide was to close Duke's saloon and fire the city manager, Colonel Blake, a hireling of the Dillons. Eddie, Nevada and Soapy find evidence at the Dillon mine that they have been stealing government gold shipments. Colonel Blake is preparing to skip town and reveals to Sherry and saloon-girl Lola, Duke's girlfriend, that Duke is really the son of Judge Hilton, kidnapped in infancy by Dillon as an act of revenge. The Dillons and Eddie and his men are in a gunfight outside of the Palace Saloon when the Judge, having learned that Duke is is son, goes out to look for him. Duke, not believing the story, is looking to kill the Judge.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: judge, cowboy, sidekick, saloon owner, bandit, drifter, confident ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A New Mexico Town Marshal, Clay Morgan, known as 'Black Patch' since he had lost an eye in the Civil War, takes his job seriously, especially after an old friend, Hank Danner, arrives in town with his wife, Helen, who formerly loved Morgan. Danner is suspected of a bank robbery and Morgan has to arrest him. Crooked saloon-owner , "Frenchy' De Vere, sees a chance to get the bank loot, and he helps Danner escape and has him killed. Morgan is accused of the killing but nothing is proved and the bank money remains missing. Carl, a young man who Danner helped when he was being bullied, goes to Helen, who also thinks Morgan killed her husband. Carl gets Danner's gun and starts practicing with it until he becomes the fastest-gun in town, with one possible exception...Morgan, the man he intends to kill.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: marshal, old friend, wife, suspect, saloon owner, gunslinger, brooding ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: As the sheriff of a small western town, Autry sings his way into a relationship with Eleanor, a singer from a Chicago nightclub who earlier witnessed a murder.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: gangster, witness, singer, sheriff, saloon owner, mobster, rousing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The outlaw Stragg has the town so intimidated that no one will speak against him no matter what he does. Sheriff Young heads for a nearby town, where there is a witness willing to testify. Meanwhile, Stragg hires a gunman to take care of the sheriff and the witness.—Snow Leopard
Plot Keywords: gambler, sheriff, son, gunslinger, saloon owner, resident, thrilling ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In a fictionalized biography, Oklahoma outlaw Belle Starr meets the Dalton gang when rescued from lynching by Bob Dalton, who falls for her. So do gang member Mac and wealthy saloon owner Tom Bradfield, who's enlisted in a bankers' scheme to trap the Daltons. Dissension among the gang and Bradfield's ambivalence complicate the plot, as Belle demonstrates her prowess with shootin' irons, horses, and as a surprisingly racy saloon entertainer.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: outlaw, brother, marshal, native american, gambler, saloon owner, spirited ...
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