TWISTED TRIGGERS (1926) Wally Wales, Jean Arthur

[Richard M Roberts]

Lester F. Scott Action Pictures are rare as hens teeth, and here's one from the BFI released by pathe, directed by Richard Thorpe, and featuring Wally Wales and Jean Arthur:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q23lJmw4ss

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[William Ferry]

The print quality was excellent. I especially liked the camera pan behind the opening titles. Here's a good example of a relatively obscure film that's in great shape because it wasn't reissued 35 times. Also interesting to see Richard Thorpe's name on one of the endless budget pictures he helmed before lucking into a long, successful, but artistically dull career at MGM.

[Richard M Roberts]

These Lester F. Scott Action Pictures westerns are very good films on very low budgets and unfortunately as rare as hen's teeth. They starred one of Scott's three stars: Wally Wales, Buddy Roosevelt, and Buffalo Bill Jr (Jay Wilsey), were frequently directed by Thorpe, and were reasonably successful westerns in their day. The first two seasons (1924-26) were distributed by Weiss Brothers-Artclass, then Pathe' picked them up for distribution through the end of the 1928 season.

Jean Arthur had her first leading lady roles in the Action Westerns in 1924, and stayed with them, supporting all three of their stars through 1926 (in fact, TWISTED TRIGGERS is her last Action Picture) before moving on to support Tom Tyler in a few FBO westerns (like BORN TO BATTLE) and then becoming Monty Banks leading lady in a pair of 1927 features.

Lester F. Scott folded Action after Pathe' dropped them in 1928, and sporadically returned to low budget film production through the thirties. He died in 1966 and apparently the negatives of all the Action westerns survived up to that point, but whomever inherited them from Scott did nothing with them and destroyed them in the early 1970's. So unfortunately very few of them survive today and only turn up once in awhile in rediscovered isolated prints like this one. I have a print of one Wally Wales called GALLOPIN' ON (1926), which I let Jack Hardy put out through Grapevine a decade or so ago in cooperation with the Julian, California Historical Society, where the picture was shot (and we went up and showed it there in 2012 and it was fascinating to see that most of the buildings used in the film were still there). Jack found a 35mm nitrate on another Wales, DESERT OF THE LOST (1927), which he put out later, and it is also very good.

Sadly, the Weiss Brothers, usually known for preserving a lot of their material, took the two seasons of Action Pictures they had and disposed of them at some point, only taking the ones that Jean Arthur appeared in and cutting them down to a single reel, then selling 16mm home prints in the fifties of those as "Jean Arthur Westerns". This was all that was in the holdings of Weiss Global Inc. when Kit Parker purchased their catalogue in the zeros. I have several of these. Unfortunately the Action's did not come out in Kodascope or Pathegram prints, losing an avenue for future preservation.

Let's hope some more of these complete Action prints turn up and Mr. Blough (who seems to be on a Jean Arthur kick right now) buys transfers and gets them up on line.


RICHARD M ROBERTS