The Fighting Marshal

In his third Western for Columbia Pictures, Tim McCoy played a prison escapee masquerading as a the new marshal of Silver City. Unaware that a full pardon is under way, Tim Benton, falsely convicted of killing his father, escapes from prison along with killer Red Larkin (Matthew Betz). En route to the Silver City Mine -- which Tim considers rightfully belonging to him -- Red kills Bob Dinsmore (W. A. Howell), the new sheriff of Silver City. Impersonating the sheriff, whom no one in town has seen before, Tim falls in love with Alice Wheeler (Dorothy Gulliver) and abandons all plans of robbing the Silver City Mine payroll. Larkin takes umbrage to this turn of events and claims that Tim killed the sheriff. But Red is arrested during a robbery and forced to tell the truth. When words arrive that the real killer of Tim's father has confessed, Tim is free to marry Alice. Although produced by penny-pinching Columbia on budgets averaging $12,000 a picture, executive producer Harry Cohn made sure that every penny counted and the McCoy series remained extremely popular with movie-goers. McCoy stayed with Columbia until 1936, when he bolted in favor of small-scale Puritan Pictures.