In the wake of his father's murder, Riley seeks vengeance on an underbelly thug known as the Confidence Man, a gambler who never loses. Riley challenges his father's killer to a round of Russian Roulette.
Mildred Manning wants to experience the Wild West firsthand with her beau, Sir Charles Beverly. While Charles is gambling, Mildred is saved from two drunken cowboys by Del Burton. Del falls in love with Mildred and follows her back east.
A notorious gambler and card cheat, George Forrester, rules a little western town with an iron hand. The men of the town plot to catch him cheating and do, but his men save him from danger. In the same town lives Gerald Austen, or Aitkens, who had left his tyrannical father in the east and made good in the west.
Tom Evans, the fearless range boss of the Double X Ranch, falls in love with a romantic schoolteacher from the East named Clara. They marry and for a time are happy, but in Tom's absence, his partner Blackie persuades the restless young wife to run away with him. Blackie soon deserts Clara, and she is forced to earn her keep at a disreputable dance hall. After robbing a stage, Blackie returns, and Tom, who has been waiting for his former friend, goes after him. In a gun battle with Tom and his posse, Blackie kills Clara and escapes, but Tom follows him into the desert and takes his horse, leaving him to die of thirst.
The legendary frontiersman and hero of boyhood paperbacks joins forces with Captain John Fremont as chief scout on a secret expedition to Mexico. The disobedient Randy tries to rejoin his friends but only succeeds in putting them all in jeopardy.
In the Canadian Northwest, Jen Galbraith lives in a tavern with her brother Val and her father Peter, a bootlegger who sells whiskey to the Indians. Val's friend Pierre resolves to win Jen, even though she is in love with Sergeant Tom Gellatly of the Mounted Police. When Val tries to retrieve some liquor sold illegally by the elder Galbraith to an Indian named Grey Cloud, the Indian insults Jen and Val shoots him. Tom is assigned to track down the murderer, but after he arrives at the tavern, Galbraith and Pierre drug him. Jen delivers the papers he is carrying to police headquarters, but when she discovers that they contain orders to arrest her brother, she shoots Tom to prevent him from going after Val.
Lucy Raven's Demolition of a Wall (Album 1) is the second film in her trilogy of "Westerns." In American cinema, the Western has traditionally celebrated the expansionist myth that the region is somehow primal or untouched. Raven, by contrast, engages with a West that–while still dramatic in its natural beauty–has been industrialized, militarized, and colonized. She filmed this work at an explosives range in New Mexico that is typically employed as a test site by the US Departments of Defense and Energy and private munitions companies. Notably, it is close to Los Alamos, a national laboratory known for its role in the development of the nuclear bomb. Using a variety of cameras and imaging techniques, Raven captures the trajectory of the pressure-blast shockwaves that move through the atmosphere in the wake of an explosion. [Overview courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art]
Jimmy Wakely and Dusty, traveling with the medicine show owned by "Lasses" White, stop at the Ferguson ranch and find the rancher and his wife killed. They take the Ferguson baby to their camp, where outlaws Joe, Slick and Pete attempt to kidnap the baby, while Dusty is reporting the murders to Sheriff Beasley and town mayor Melinda Pringle. Wakely and his singers hide the baby from its legal guardian, Doc Judd Thomas, as they suspect him of being connected with the Ferguson murders.
Doris Rogers, half owner of a dude ranch, as Jimmy Wakely, "Lasses" White and Dusty Smith to help run it. U.S. Marshal Tom Logan, posing as a stage driver, is killed during a mock holdup of new arrivals to the ranch. Brenda Amers and Horatio Pennypacker, eastern jewel thieves, bring their loot to Roy Williams, who owns the other half of the ranch as a blind for his gang which resells stolen jewels. Vaughn, the desk clerk, re-cuts the jewels in a secret room in the ice house. Fearing he will be caught, Brenda refuses Williams her stolen diamonds and hides them in a bar of soap.
Dean extrapolated landscape images from 1920s Ford advertisements, leaving out the cars to focus on their representations of place and nature. She made the animation using a digital version of a multiplane camera technique employed in early Disney films to create an immersive and 3D illusion by separating two-dimensional images. This technique was itself inspired by Ford’s assembly line; Dean uses it to explore historical depictions of the American dream, exaggerating the subject matter’s fantastical style. [Overview courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art]
Whitley and his singing group want to make time with young ladies at a finishing school...and vice-versa. However, the old matron in charge threatens to shoot Ray and his men so they come up with a plan to trick her.
Urged on by his wife and daughter and against his better judgment, Texas cattle-baron Maverick Brander, finds himself in Washington D. C. as an elected congressman. However, when the Brander family arrives in Washington, they are met at every junction by snobbery and ridicule. Then an investigative committee arrives from Texas to check up on how Maverick is representing their interests.