Acting
Mine owner William Sharon keeps having his gold shipments held up by a gang of bandits. Sharon hires banker Charles Crocker, who happens to have connections in the Central Pacific Railroad, to build a spur line from Virginia City to Carson City, so that the gold can be shipped by railroad. Silent Jeff Kincaid is the railroad engineer. However there is opposition to the railroad, chiefly from another mine owner, Big Jack Davis.
Unjustly booted out of the cavalry, Mike McComb strikes out for Nevada, and deciding never to be used again, ruthlessly works his way up to becoming one of the most powerful silver magnates in the west. His empire begins to fall apart as the other mining combines rise against him and his stubbornness loses him the support of his wife and old friends.
Tom Destry, son of a legendary frontier peacekeeper, doesn’t believe in gunplay. Thus he becomes the object of widespread ridicule when he rides into the wide-open town of Bottleneck, the personal fiefdom of the crooked Kent.
A fashion model witnesses the brutal assassination of an investigative journalist by the Ku Klux Klan while traveling to a small town to visit her sister.
Duke Fergus falls for Ann 'Flaxen' Tarry in the Barbary Coast in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. He loses money to crooked gambler Boss Tito Morell, goes home, learns to gamble, and returns. After he makes a fortune, he opens his own place with Flaxen as the entertainer; but the 1906 quake destroys his place.
Richard Dix as Dan Taylor and Preston S. Foster as Paxton Bryce are two longtime friends seeking their fortune in Texas after the war. The two men decide, not without problems, to establish a cattle empire. Paxton becoming too ambitious, distances himself from Dan and Abby, Paxton's wife. It will only be after a personal tragedy that he will come back to his senses.
An easy-going cowboy is mistaken by the townsfolk for a notorious gunman. The cowboy decides it would be best to leave town, until he meets the gunman's girlfriend.
Cowboy Sunset Carson teams up with Frog Millhouse on a routine supply trip to Placer City. Before long, the duo find themselves ambushed by a team of dastardly highwaymen embroiled in an extortion ring. Sunset and Frog must then go undercover to set things right for a mining town under siege. Galloping hooves, spittin' six shooters, and all manner of disreputable behavior ensue.
In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
Roy and Gabby return to Gabby's Texas ranch, after fighting with the Confederate military during the American Civil War, to find that a blustery Union Colonel whom they have previously hassled is now their district commander. Unbeknownst to the Colonel, however, is that the soldiers he believes have been sent to assist him are actually Union Army rejects who have come to loot the civilian populace under the guise of reinstituting normalcy to the former Confederate district.
Frenchie Fontaine sells her successful business in New Orleans to come West. Her reason? Find the men who killed her father, Frank Dawson. But she only knows one of the two who did and she's determined to find out the other.
A city girl on a bus tour of the West encounters a handsome rodeo cowboy who helps her forget her city suitors.
Adventuring author Jean Williams is living in the wilds of Alaska alongside the Eskimo people gathering material for her novel. She befriends several animals who become her loyal friends such as a pair of bear cubs whose mother has been killed by hunter Gaston Rogers, a talking raven and the bereaved collie Firefly who will not leave the grave of her master, a game warden killed in the line of duty. The community is imperiled by a pack of wolves and wild dogs, led by a wild dog called Swift Lightning, who are killing all the reindeer. With the supply of fresh meat gone, the Eskimos are migrating to lands with more food. Hunter Gaston agrees to take Jean to Nenana, Alaska, along with his furs by dog sled. Jean, who despises Gaston as being more savage and blood thirsty than the four-legged predators, is followed by her loyal animals.
A group of thugs tries to steal the cursed title gem from a jeweler who has been hired to cut it into small, saleable pieces.
Hammond is after the Craig ranch and has framed Charlie Craig for murder. Mother Craig brings in the Range Busters. They capture one of Hammond's men and Alibi plans to trick him into a confession as to who the real murderer is. Meanwhile, Denny has overheard Hammond's plans for his next move and he and Crash set out to round up the gang.
A cowboy and his sidekick fight evil guys who want to rustle cattle in order to get hold of land.
Lambert owns the trucking line that ships cattle to market. When he raises his rates Roy decides to ship the cattle on the River Boat. When Lambert and his men are unable to stop the boat, they rustle the cattle.
A superhero known as The Black Commando battles Nazi agents who use explosive gases and artificial lightning to sabotage the war effort.
Billy Carson and Fuzzy Jones have just collected a reward and Fuzzy indulges in a dream of getting away from the hectic life he has been leading and wants to settle down. They arrive in Red Rock just as the newspaper is being sold at foreclosure and, despite the attempts by Lafe Barlow to intimidate him from bidding. Fuzzy finds himself the owner of a newspaper. Fuzzy meets Edith Martin, daughter of the former owner, and unthinkingly commits himself to carrying on her father's policy of bringing a telegraph line to Red Rock. For reason of his own, Barlow is against this and has his henchmen wage a campaign of terror against the ranchers and citizens. Before long, Billy who had been lazily indifferent to everything connected to Fuzzy and his newspaper, decides to take a hand on the side of the good guys.
The Saturday matinee crowd got two cowboy stars for the price of one in this lavishly budgeted western serial starring former singing cowboy Dick Foran and Buck Jones. The latter contributed deadpan humor to the proceedings, making Jones perhaps the highest paid B-western comedy relief in history. The two heroes defend the Death Valley borax miners from an outlaw gang headed by Wolf Reade. An extraordinarily strong cast -- for a serial, at least -- supported the stars, headed by Charles Bickford as Reade, Leo Carillo, Lon Chaney, Jr., and silent screen star Monte Blue. Leading lady Jeanne Kelly later changed her name to Jean Brooks and starred in the atmospheric RKO thriller The Seventh Victim (1943). Universal claimed to have spent $1 million on this serial and made sure to get their money's worth by endlessly recycling the action footage in serials and B-westerns for years to come.
