Sunset Carson is a big part of why I love B westerns. His Six Gun Heroes television program on South Carolina Educational Television introduced me to several B western stars that I may have never seen otherwise. I eventually started going to western film fairs and got to meet Sunset Carson in person. He was an extremely nice person to everyone who came to his table, show after show. The man signing autographs really was the hero from the movies. Sunset understood the importance of connecting with his fans.
Days of Buffalo Bill has absolutely nothing to do with Buffalo Bill. The title is just a generic western title. The movie starts off with Sunset and his sidekick Banty (Tom London) trying to save a young rancher from getting taken by a couple of crooked gamblers. Sunset's good intentions backfire with the rancher being killed, and for the rest of the movie Sunset and Banty try to set everything straight. Along the way they run into Molly Owens (Peggy Stewart), the sister of the young rancher who was killed. She is a tough female rancher that everyone respects, and she tries to kill Sunset a couple of times. A nice touch is the way the double-crossers keep double-crossing each other during this movie right up to the end. There is enough action and adventure in this movie to keep it interesting, but at the end there is a situation where the right characters just "show up" at the right time to tie up the plot. Even then there is an action packed climax.
Tom London is not someone that I normally think of as a sidekick, but he was good in that role. He apparently took out an upper plate to go for a "Gabby Hayes" approach to being a sidekick. He played it kind of restrained, however, because he never steals a scene from Sunset Carson.
This is a good movie, but Days Of Buffalo Bill was not the best western of its day. Sunset was not as good an actor as some of the other Republic stars, not that many of the cowboys were that great to begin with. He was bigger than anyone around him and seemed suited to the action. That explains why Sunset Carson was one of the best liked western stars of 1946. His success at Republic was partly due to being surrounded with a good cast a crew because his later movies away from Republic were not good. Days Of Buffalo Bill is an excellent example of Sunset at his best.
