Tweet The Curse of Charles Starrett

Boyd Magers put together a fascinating list of lost/missing talkie westerns at Chuck Anderson's Old Corral website, http://www.b-westerns.com/lost.htm.

Included in the list is an insane number of Charles Starrett's Columbia features, spanning 1936-1952. Did Columbia really lose all of these, or have they just not escaped the vaults? The titles are:

Mysterious Avenger (1936)
Code of the Range (1936)
Secret Patrol (1936)
Dodge City Trail (1936)
Trapped (1937)
Westbound Mail (1937)
One Man Justice (1937)
Call of the Rockies (1938)
Law of the Plains (1938)
Texas Stampede (1939)
North of the Yukon (1939)
Two Fisted Rangers (1940)
West of Abilene (1940)
Prairie Stranger (1941)
Medico of Painted Springs (1941)
Pinto Kid (1941)
Thunder Over the Prairie (1941)
Royal Mounted Patrol (1941)
Riders of the Northland (1942)
Overland to Deadwood (1942)
Riding Through Nevada (1942)
Cowboy in the Clouds (1943)
Robin Hood of the Range (1943)
Hail to the Rangers (1943)
Law of the Northwest (1943)
Riding West (1944)
Cowboy from Lonesome River (1944)
Sagebrush Heroes (1945)
Rustlers of the Badlands (1945)
Frontier Gunlaw (1946)
El Dorado Pass (1948)
Quick on the Trigger (1948)
Horsemen of the Sierras (1949)
Renegades of the Sage (1949)
Outcast of Black Mesa (1950)
Texas Dynamo (1950)
Across the Badlands (1950)
Raiders of Tomahawk Creek (1950)
Lightning Guns (1950)
Ridin' the Outlaw Trail (1951)
Fort Savage Raiders (1951)
Kid from Amarillo (1951) (last half exists)
Hawk of Wild River (1952)
Junction City (1952)

[Mike Gebert]

To lose so many talkies of one performer and hardly any of anything else (it's not like there are vast amounts of the sound Columbia library missing otherwise) seems hard to believe, especially since nearly everything else on the list belongs to the early thirties; for so many 40s and 50s movies to be gone seems quite anomalous. Was there some deal where his films were licensed to someone else and the negatives left the studio? I guess anything's possible, but it seems more likely that they're just buried really, really deep.

The Canadian-made SECRET PATROL is accounted for, in the National Archives in Ottawa.

Let's put it this way. Charles Starrett/The Durango Kid titles were shown on Australian TV in the early days of the packages but what titles were shown I don't know. The usual timeslot was mid Saturday afternoon and this slot also saw the Mr Motos & Charlie Chans and probably other series. If they are said to be lost to that amount I would be very surprised. Plenty of people selling titles with Charles/Durango.

To lose so many talkies of one performer and hardly any of anything else (it's not like there are vast amounts of the sound Columbia library missing otherwise) seems hard to believe, especially since nearly everything else on the list belongs to the early thirties; for so many 40s and 50s movies to be gone seems quite anomalous. Was there some deal where his films were licensed to someone else and the negatives left the studio? I guess anything's possible, but it seems more likely that they're just buried really, really deep.

I believe Columbia made 128 Charles Starrett westerns between 1936-52 still this list of 40+ is not encouraging. I think the problem is Columbia never bothered to sell tv rights to most of them which is bizarre given how popular westerns were on tv in the 50s and 60s. Most of this 40+ list probably exists somewhere, just it has never been marketed. I don't think I ever saw a Starrett Columbia western on tv before Encore Westerns channel in the 1990's and some of them have only first played on TCM in the last few years.

There's also a number of Rita Hayworth 1930's B's for Columbia that have yet to be located.

AFAIK, all the Starretts exist, as well as the Hayworths; Grover Crisp has been doing yeoman work in preserving them (we ran a glowing print of OUTLAWS OF THE PRAIRIE at Cinecon a few years back). But you have to understand that the market for B-westerns is pretty darn small these days, and they are not considered high-priority titles. Heck, we have Oscar-winning films that have yet to be released! But just because they're not out there doesn't mean they're "lost."

Mike S.

Sony should think about releasing some of their Columbia B-westerns on MOD discs. The Warner Archive Collection Tim Holt and Monogram collections have been a big hit with the fans, who keep begging for more. (I've bought them all and I'd do the same with a Sony set of Starretts -- and Buck Jones and Tim McCoy and those Bill Elliott serials!)

I wouldn't say Starrett was cursed...at least he survived the ship explosion (by not being on board) that killed the director and crew members of THE VIKING.

AFAIK, all the Starretts exist, as well as the Hayworths; Grover Crisp has been doing yeoman work in preserving them (we ran a glowing print of OUTLAWS OF THE PRAIRIE at Cinecon a few years back).
Mike S.

Well, I'm glad that few (if any) of them are truly lost. But as another poster noted, it's odd that Columbia (or Screen Gems, more likely) didn't exploit that trove of Starretts back when TV stations were buying every old western they could get.

For that matter, I wonder why the studio make more of an effort to sell its animation catalog to TV? I don't think I ever saw a Scrappy cartoon in my life until I began attending Cinecon.

They held them back so us jaded animation buffs would have something new to discover in our later years.

Thanks Columbia!

For that matter, I wonder why the studio make more of an effort to sell its animation catalog to TV? I don't think I ever saw a Scrappy cartoon in my life until I began attending Cinecon.

I've heard from friends a little older than me that the Columbia cartoons ran on It's Wallace (the long running kid's program that ran in Phoenix, Arizona) in the 1950s. By the time I was old enough to watch the show in the 1960s they were running the old B/W Warner's cartoons instead (and those were gone a few years later as color cartoons replaced them).

Joe Moore

Sony should think about releasing some of their Columbia B-westerns on MOD discs. The Warner Archive Collection Tim Holt and Monogram collections have been a big hit with the fans, who keep begging for more. (I've bought them all and I'd do the same with a Sony set of Starretts -- and Buck Jones and Tim McCoy and those Bill Elliott serials!)

I've been really disappointed the way Sony/Columbia is squeaking out a handful of MOD titles each month while WB knocks them out left and right. Sony could release a Starrett dvd every month and not exhaust the inventory until eleven years!

For that matter, I wonder why the studio make more of an effort to sell its animation catalog to TV? I don't think I ever saw a Scrappy cartoon in my life until I began attending Cinecon.

I've heard from friends a little older than me that the Columbia cartoons ran on It's Wallace (the long running kid's program that ran in Phoenix, Arizona) in the 1950s. By the time I was old enough to watch the show in the 1960s they were running the old B/W Warner's cartoons instead (and those were gone a few years later as color cartoons replaced them).

Joe Moore

Yes, but oddly enough, that Samba package of Scrappy and Krazy Kat cartoons left Channel 5 (that station that had WALLACE AND LADMO) with a former program manager that ended up over at Channel 10 along with those cartoons, and I can recall seeing them pop up on Channel 10 as Sunday Morning filler from time to time.


RICHARD M ROBERTS