GUN SMOKE! Classic Western! Full Free Movie! Starring Richard Arlen & William “Stage” Boyd! WOW!

GUNSMOKE starring James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon is…. not what you’re about to see. We are going way back with a 1931 feature film called…you guessed it, GUN SMOKE. 24 years before the classic TV series premiered, there’s plenty of GUN SMOKE in this solid western feature as underworld City Slickers try and take over a western town!

Richard Arlen is the cowboy hero up against murderous gangster William Boyd. Whoa, you say! Wm Boyd! Hopalong Cassidy as a villain? It’s not what you think. The year this film was made, 1931, the actor William Boyd was caught in a police raid at his home in connection with the seizure of gambling equipment, bootleg booze, and porno movies. The Hearst newspaper syndicate printed the story, incorrectly using the photo of the other William Boyd, our William Boyd, then under contract to RKO, which contract carried a morals clause. That's all it took, simply running the wrong photo.

Despite being completely innocent, Boyd was soon out at RKO, and the only studios that would thereafter hire him were the bottom rung of Poverty Row independents. In 1935 when Harry Sherman approached Boyd to take a lesser role in the planned Hopalong Cassidy series, he was sleeping off a bad drunk at his beach house, which belonged to his then current wife, Dorothy Sebastian.

In a strange coincidence, the same year the first HOP-A-LONG CASSIDY movie went into production, the other William "Stage" Boyd died. But, before he was “branded” William “Stage” Boyd by the courts, the Boyd you’re about to see, had been in some major features. He had been a leading man with Barbara Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert. Plus, he co-starred with Gary Cooper in the early talkie version of THE SPOILERS.

The real star in GUN SMOKE is Richard Arlen whose long career includes the first Oscar winning Best Picture, WINGS, and over 200 other films. His unusual sidekick for this film is Eugene Paulette, probably best known to film fans as Friar Tuck to Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood. The leading lady is Mary Brian a silent movie ingenue who had portrayed Wendy in the 1924 version of PETER PAN.

Another young actress is Anne Shirley who grew up on film. Under the name of Dawn O’Day, she plays the grocer’s daughter in GUN SMOKE. Several of her biggest films include ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, as Anne, in 1935, and as Barbara Stanwyck’s daughter in STELLA DALLAS, both received Oscar nods. Anne was also in the film noir classic, MURDER, MY SWEET, with Dick Powell before retiring at the age of 26. Anne was married to actor John Payne and writer Charles Lederer, known for KISS OF DEATH, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and GENTLEMAN PREFER BLONDES.

This action-packed movie was directed by Edward Sloman and filmed by the dean of outdoor westerns, Archie Stout. Stout shot most of the early John Wayne B westerns and many of the Hopalong Cassidy films starring the “real” William Boyd. Stout also filmed ANGEL AND THE BADMAN, FORT APACHE, THE QUIET MAN, THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY and HONDO. Notice a trend there?

There was even another western feature called GUNSMOKE. It was made in 1953 and starred Audie Murphy. Neither this nor Audie’s film has anything to do with the classic TV and radio series.

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