Barton MacLane

A 1951 Civil War Western directed by production design legend William Cameron Menzies. In 1864, a small Confederate artillery unit under Major Clay Clayburn (James Craig) hauls four cannons to the top of Devil's Mountain, a Georgia peak overlooking the railroad supplying Sherman's march on Atlanta. Their mission: block the Federal trains as long as possible. Opposing them is Union Major Will Denning (Guy Madison) — Clayburn's best friend from West Point — while Kathy Summers (Barbara Payton), the woman both men love, is caught between them. Shot in vivid SuperCineColor, it is in the public domain.

Western

One of the Zane Grey westerns Henry Hathaway directed for Paramount in the early 1930s, back when Randolph Scott was still playing B-leads in buckskin. Scott is Dale, a mountain man who overhears saloonkeeper Beasley's scheme to grab a rancher's land and kidnap his daughter — so Dale kidnaps her first, dragging the enraged but safe heiress (Verna Hillie) into the hills while he untangles the plot. Harry Carey steals scenes as a philosophical crook. Handsomely shot around Big Bear and considerably better made than the poverty-row oaters of the same year. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western · Action

The fifth of Columbia's Whistler films. A shady private detective named Don Gale is hired by an old shopkeeper to find a young woman from his past so he can leave her a fortune, but the case is a setup, and Gale is soon framed for murder. As the Whistler's narration reminds us, the detective's own greed set the trap, and the film watches him scramble to stay ahead of the police and the real killer. Richard Dix plays his seventh Whistler lead, with Barton MacLane as the cop on his trail and Mike Mazurki as a menacing thug. William Castle directed. Released in 1946, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Noir · Crime

Larry Elliot, a timid chess columnist who covers murders for a newspaper, flees to Grape City to escape a gangster's threats — only to land in a haunted-house mystery involving a stolen jade chess set, a missing corpse, and a fortune hidden in a creepy mansion. Jack Haley, the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, plays the jittery reporter alongside Ann Savage and Barton MacLane. A Pine-Thomas production for Paramount, also released as Treasure of Fear. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Mystery · Horror

Outlaws is an American Western television series that aired from 1960 to 1962 on NBC. The series follows Marshal Frank Ragan and his deputies as they maintain law and order in the Oklahoma Territory. Unlike many Westerns of the era, Outlaws often focused on the perspective of the outlaws themselves, exploring the motivations and circumstances that drove men to crime. The show starred Barton MacLane as Marshal Ragan, Don Collier as Will Foreman, and Jock Gaynor as Jonathon Jones. Produced by Revue Studios, the series ran for 50 episodes across two seasons. Many episodes are in the public domain.

Western · Crime