Hollywood Cowboy (1937)

aka Wings Over Wyoming (1937)

George O’Brien stars as B movie cowboy Jeffrey Carson in this B Western that was directed and co-written (with Dan Jarrett) by Ewing Scott. While shooting a movie in Wyoming Carson gets involved in a range war ostensibly between wealthy ranchers and their cattle wranglers before he later discovers that the conflict has been exacerbated by some gangsters (led by Charles Middleton) that had been run out of their city by the ‘new administration’.

After his movie wraps Carson runs into a writer friend he calls Shakespeare (played by Joe Caits) who’s on the run from a Hollywood scandal and the two begin a hunting trip to lay low for a while. But after Carson rescues pretty Joyce Butler (Cecilia Parker) from some of Kramer’s (Middleton) thugs he and his friend end up working for her tough mom Violet (Maude Eburne) who has so far resisted paying the 1% graft to Kramer’s Cattlemen Protection Agency. Naturally Carson is attracted to Joyce as she is to him especially per the contrast between the handsome actor and the less than manly rancher Courtney (Frank Milan) that had been courting her.

Of course Kramer and his thugs are no match for Carson who employs a Hollywood stunt pilot (Lester Dorr) to force down the gangster’s plane and pilot (Walter De Palma) who’d been terrorizing the other ranchers by driving off their herds and bombing water troughs and even a dam.