Lawless Valley
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
David Howard
George O'brien
Kay Sutton
Walter Miller
Fred Kohler Sr.
Fred Kohler Jr.
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
After serving one year of a five-year sentence for robbery, Larry Rhodes is granted parole and released from an Arizona state prison. While riding in a train boxcar toward his home town, Larry befriends Bob North, a drifter, and later introduces him to his good friend, Tim Wade. From Tim, Bob learns that because Larry and his father, a homesteader, refused to sell their land to rancher Tom Marsh, they were framed for robbery. Larry's father was then murdered, but his death was ruled a suicide by the town's corrupt sheriff, Heck Hampton. Tim also tells Bob that Tom and his son Jeff felt threatened by Larry's romance with Norma, Tom's ward, who is also the legal owner of the Marsh ranch. When Norma hears that Larry has been released, she connives with Fresno, the Marshes's sympathetic cook, to sneak away and see him at Tim's house. While the young couple reacquaint themselves, Tom and Jeff burst in and pick a fight with Larry and try to have him arrested for violating his parole. Later, Tim gives Larry his father's .41 calibre gun, which Larry then takes into town to show Seth, the gunsmith. Alerted by Seth that Larry is carrying a gun, a violation of his parole, Tom tells Sheriff Hampton and his deputy, Speedy McGow, to apprehend the ex-convict. Larry, however, outsmarts the sheriff and Tom's henchmen and passes the gun to Tim before he is caught. When Larry then learns that Tom, whose guardianship will soon expire, is pressuring Norma to marry Jeff the next day, he arranges a late night escape for her. Apprised of the scheme, Tom catches Norma as she is sneaking away and also apprehends Larry. To save Larry, Norma agrees to marry Jeff on condition that Tom free the ex-convict before the ceremony. As promised, Larry is released but is ambushed by Tom's men on the road. Larry escapes from his attackers, however, and is joined by Bob and Tim, who tell him that an affidavit from an out-of-town gunsmith verifies that Larry's father's gun had been repaired after his father reportedly had shot himself. Armed with this evidence, which indicates that the gun could not have been fired by his father, Larry confronts Sheriff Heck, who finally confesses that Tom and Jeff had committed the robbery and had murdered Larry's father while planting damning evidence on their homestead. Larry then rides to the Marsh ranch in time to stop Norma's marriage to Jeff. After Tom and Jeff are exposed as the robbers and the stolen cash is recovered, Bob reveals that he is a special Treasury Department agent. His name cleared, Larry then marries Norma.
Director
David Howard
Cast
George O'brien
Kay Sutton
Walter Miller
Fred Kohler Sr.
Fred Kohler Jr.
Lew Kelly
George Macquarrie
Earle Hodgins
Chill Wills
Dot Farley
The Four Tunes
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Lawless Valley was Fred Kohler, Sr.'s last film and was the first picture in which his son, Fred Kohler, Jr., appeared with him. Hollywood Reporter production charts list John Twist and Clarence Upson Young, not Oliver Drake, as the film's screenwriters, but their contribution to the final film has not been determined. Carl Stockdale is listed as a cast member in Hollywood Reporter production charts, but his participation in the final film has not been confirmed. Modern sources include Robert Stanton, Ben Corbett, George Chesebro and Robert McKenzie in the cast.
