EMPTY HOLSTERS

US, 1937, 62 minutes, black-and-white.
Dick Foran, Patricia Walthall, Emmett Vogan, Glenn Strange, Wilfred Lucas, Tom Brower.
Directed by B. Reeves Eason.

Empty Holsters is one of many singing western starring Dick Foran, produced Warner Brothers in the mid 1930s. After singing in a band, he became an actor Warner Bros, but it was his popularity with audiences in these Westerns that helped him make his mark. They usually open with a song, as did this one with two other songs later.

Foran plays a cowboy riding with the cattle, singing, in love with the daughter of the town’s banker. However, there is an arch-villain in the town who is after the bank and after the girl. He arranges a stagecoach robbery, killing the two drivers, planting his own witnesses who lie in court that Foran is the robber. He is sentenced to 10 years but is released after five years for good conduct. When he returns one of the conditions for his parole is to hand over his guns to the sheriff – hence the title Empty Holsters.

When his father is threatened, he plans to ride to give the evidence to the marshal,but it is the 1890s and there is a telephone call by the villain undermining his visit. However, the villain organisers the robbery of a safe from the bank. There is confrontation, the fistfight and shootout.

And, of course, there is a romance between Foran and the bank’s daughter.