Wildly Different from the Norm

Hands Across the Rockies (1941)

Columbia Pictures produced a series of Wild Bill Hickok movies in the 1940s, since this is the only entry I’ve had a chance to view, I can’t really judge the overall series. But, Hands Across the Rockies is a very different kind of b-western. It is light on the action front and most of movie is a courtroom drama.

Lambert Hillyer was a director that specialized in b-westerns, he’d directed many of Johnny Mack Brown’s movies, and he even directed the first Durango Kid film. He had over one hundred and sixty directorial credits that he amassed over a career that lasted for nearly forty years.

Bill Elliot plays Hickok and he joins his sidekick Cannonball Taylor (played by Dub Taylor) on a trip to the town of Independence in the hopes of getting to the bottom of Cannonball’s father’s murder. There’s no mystery for the audience as to who the killer is, as the film opens with the guilty party (Kenneth MacDonald) attempting to marry the only witness to the crime (Mary Daily), and paying off her family to secure the deal. The bulk of the movie takes place in the courtroom where Eddy Waller is running the show as Judge Plunkett.

Bill Elliot is probably best known for his Red Ryder movies that he later made for Republic Pictures, but he’s pretty good in this role too. Dub Taylor was a familiar face for b-oater fans; he’d played the comedic sidekick in many of them, and often used the character name of Cannonball in many of them too. Eddy Waller is a real pleasure here, he’s probably best remembered for the movies he made with Allan Rocky Lane, where he played the recurring character of Nugget Clark.

The movie is pretty good, but I still don’t get the point behind the odd title.

-William J. White