The Deputy's Double Cross

A a rather superior western, this one, largely due to the presence of Laura Laplante who plays an unsophisticated urchin secretly in love with the deputy sheriff whose sweetheart Rose (Ethel Ritchie) is in fact just stringing him along because she is in league with McNab (Frank Whitson) and the gang of gold thieves he is after. McNab, ostensibly an honest gold buyer, persuades the sheriff to dismiss Randall. The gang give him a deadline to leave town..... 4.30 rather than 12pm but otherwise much the same sort of thing and quite an early example. There is however no shoot out. The gang kidnap Randall and it is up to his little guardian angel to save him with some fine riding from LaPlante.

The film is available in the Huntley Archives (unidentified, although the title is in this case present in the film, and poorly presented as usual on youtube), their number 17299 and 17298. The poor state of these Huntley Archive clips is especially annoying because it clearly represents deliberate policy on their part (in the hopes of selling better quality copes direct?) and is extremely stupid. With better presentation they would attract many more people both to the clips themselves and to their archive. All film archives should try and follow the superb example of the Dutch EYE archive which outdoes them all even when a lot of their material are rather dull Dutch documentaries. Nobody is ever going to get rich from sales of silent films and protecting copyright (and they do not really have copyright) makes no sense at all; the important thing is that those films should be available as widely as possible and in as good a quality as possible. If they did so, it would be to the advantage both of users and of themselves.