Billy the Kid Wanted (1941)
Riding into Paradise Valley, Billy and his partner Jeff find their sidekick Fuzzy jailed on a trumped-up charge, and uncover a crooked businessman using rigged land deals and the law itself to strip local ranchers of their property.
Produced by Producers Releasing Corporation, the bottom tier of Poverty Row studios, Billy the Kid Wanted belonged to a long-running series built around Buster Crabbe’s version of the outlaw, made cheaply and quickly under the famously prolific Sam Newfield, who by some counts directed more features than any other American director.
Background
Released October 4, 1941, Billy the Kid Wanted was written by Fred Myton and produced by Sigmund Neufeld for Producers Releasing Corporation, the bottom tier of the Poverty Row studios. It was the seventh entry in PRC’s long-running Billy the Kid series, begun in 1940, and the first to star Buster Crabbe in the role, replacing Bob Steele, who had played the part in the series’ earlier installments. Sam Newfield, credited by some counts with directing more features than any other American director, kept the series moving on the tight budgets and fast schedules typical of Poverty Row production.
What to watch for
Fuzzy, Billy’s sidekick, leaves the trail to settle down as a homesteader in Paradise Valley, only to be jailed on a trumped-up charge and have to send for Billy and Jeff to bail him out. The investigation that follows uncovers Matt Brawley, a businessman using rigged land deals and a captured local sheriff’s office to strip ranchers of their property, a plot wrinkle common to Poverty Row westerns that let the genre’s simple heroics double as a story about institutional corruption. Al St. John’s Fuzzy supplies most of the comic relief, a role he played across dozens of B-western sidekick parts in this era.
