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In the opening scene of the 1957 western The Tall T, a man on horseback is spotted from afar by a boy and his father, prompting the elder homesteader to fetch his rifle. The audience shares their uncertainty, seeing this figure through a telephoto lens from a great distance, but when the stranger gets closer to the ranch, he’s recognized by the boy as an ally.

It’s the film’s hero, Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott), a fellow rancher, and the gun is therefore set aside. The Tall T is the first in a series of westerns grouped under the name Ranown (after producer Harry Joe Brown and Scott’s production company) that director Budd Boetticher made in the late ’50s and concluded with the release of Comanche Station in 1960, and in this inaugural scene, Boetticher establishes a crucial theme and visual pattern of this spiritually unified set of potboilers.

The Stranger Wore a GunIn the pantheon of great Western collaborations sits three mantels: John Wayne and John Ford, James Stewart and Anthony Mann, Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher. There is another mantelpiece, unvarnished and dirty from disuse: Randolph Scott and André De Toth. Does it belong there? Elements, directions, suits in a deck—the trappings of the West always come in fours. Why does this cycle of films lack a reputation, good standing, or even a quick moniker? Skronky where Ford is rhythmic, constricted where Mann is open, jagged where Boetticher is smooth, the De Toth films, six all told with Scott, give, rather than a cohesive persona or moral treatise, a cluster of pictures and ideas on a centerless society. Brass lanterns blown dark, drawn-out fistfights, flaming wagons streaking across the plains, gunfights in pitch-black bars; these images run across the sextet, fogging the hopeful vision of the American West.

Wow! Fritz Lang's second western is a marvel -- a combo of matinee innocence and that old Germanic edict that character equals fate. It has a master's sense of color and design. Robert Young is an odd fit but Randolph Scott is nothing less than terrific. You'd think Lang was born on the Pecos. Western Union Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1941 / Color /1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date November 8, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Randolph Scott, Robert Young, Virginia Gilmore, Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Chill Wills, Slim Summerville, Barton MacLane, Victor Kilian, George Chandler, Chief John Big Tree, Iron Eyes Cody, Jay Silverheels. Cinematography Edward Cronjager, Allen M. Davey Original Music David Buttolph Written by Robert Carson from the novel by Zane Grey Produced by Harry Joe Brown (associate) Directed by Fritz Lang

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Darryl Zanuck of 20th Fox treated most writers well, was good for John Ford...

Randolph Scott's final 'Ranown' western is a minimalist masterpiece, an unusually gentle story about a great westerner on a forlorn romantic quest. It's also a showcase for the underrated Nancy Gates and Claude Akins, and a pleasure to watch in wide, wide CinemaScope. Comanche Station All-region Blu-ray Explosive Media / Alive 1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 74 min. / Street Date July 22, 2016 / Einer Gibt Nicht Auf / available at Amazon.de/ EUR14,99 Starring Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Atkins, Skip Homeier, Richard Rust. Cinematography Charles Lawton Jr. Film Editor Edwin H. Bryant Music supervisor Mischa Balaleinikoff Written by Burt Kennedy Produced and Directed by Budd Boetticher

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

One must be careful when ordering Blu-ray discs of Hollywood films from overseas. Foreign distributors license American movies that the studios won't release here, but sometimes they don't have access to good video masters. In a few cases the films being offered are simply being pirated.

By Doug Oswald

Randolph Scott plays a bounty hunter returning a former Indian captive in “Comanche Station,” a 1960 Columbia release directed by Bud Boetticher and written by western regular Burt Kennedy.

Jefferson Cody (Scott) trades rifles and other items with a group of Comanche Indians in exchange for a captive settler, Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates). Her husband has offered a large reward for her return. After the exchange they’re met by outlaw Ben Lane (Claude Akins) and his sidekicks Frank (Skip Homeier) and Dobie (Richard Rust) who help Cody during an Indian attack at Comanche Station. Lane and Cody are old enemies and he and his men have been searching for Nancy. Lane wants a piece of the $5,000 reward in return for helping protect Nancy on the journey to her husband. Cody reluctantly agrees and forms an uneasy alliance due to the Indian threat.

Cody befriends Dobie, who wants...

Constance Cummings: Actress in minor Hollywood movies became major London stage star. Constance Cummings: Actress went from Harold Lloyd and Frank Capra to Noël Coward and Eugene O'Neill Actress Constance Cummings, whose career spanned more than six decades on stage, in films, and on television in both the U.S. and the U.K., died ten years ago on Nov. 23. Unlike other Broadway imports such as Ann Harding, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, and Claudette Colbert, the pretty, elegant Cummings – who could have been turned into a less edgy Constance Bennett had she landed at Rko or Paramount instead of Columbia – never became a Hollywood star. In fact, her most acclaimed work, whether in films or – more frequently – on stage, was almost invariably found in British productions. That's most likely why the name Constance Cummings – despite the DVD availability of several of her best-received performances – is all but forgotten.

(A.C. Lyles, below)

by Jon Zelazny

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared at EightMillionStories.com on February 27, 2009

There’s an A.C. Lyles Building at the Paramount Pictures main lot, but you won’t find A.C. Lyles there; his office is on the fourth floor of the William S. Hart Building.

When I arrived for our interview, Mr. Lyles was chatting with some visitors in his outer office. He bid me into his main office, and asked his assistant Pam to put in a video… a short promo reel that opens with a six minute tribute by then-President Ronald Reagan, who warmly recalls his and Nancy’s many years of friendship with A.C. and his wife Martha, and congratulates A.C. on his fifty years at the studio. The President’s intro is followed by taped congratulations from President Carter, President Ford, and Vice President Bush, then assorted clips celebrating Mr.

By Michael Atkinson

The last of the red hot Golden Age Hollywood genre buckaroos, Budd Boetticher represented a long-vanished prototype: the man's man studio director who, before turning gruffly to making pictures, had spent years being a boxer or a stevedore or a soldier or what have you. Today, filmmakers pay their dues by earning six figures shooting shampoo commercials; then, a man who made westerns or war movies or gangster films was a man who had lived in the world and returned with a heartful of brutal and hopeful business you can't learn by watching other movies. In a sense, Boetticher outdid the competition by becoming a professional Mexican matador right out of college -- a scenario difficult to beat for hard-won iron-man chops in Tinseltown. Of course his biography influences how his best films -- the westerns he made between 1956 and 1960 -- have been perceived and why they've been canonized,...