William Hart beats the gambler who is cheating him to the draw and flees for his life. Clifford Smith pursues him; Enid Markey helps him escape.
William S. Hart is frequently called the first cowboy superstar, but that's not right. Broncho Billy Anderson had co-owned his own movie studio for almost a decade at this point, but Broncho Billy was a cowboy who could turn his hand to anything from a low comedy to a low murder. Hart was the Good Bad Man, someone who lived outside the law but by a real code. He had a character that could be recognized from one film to the next and he had Joe August as his cameraman, an artist who stayed near the top until his death.
So this early Hart movie helped establish him. It was more than a series of plots that made sense. It was the emergence of a new way of saying things.
William S. Hart is frequently called the first cowboy superstar, but that's not right. Broncho Billy Anderson had co-owned his own movie studio for almost a decade at this point, but Broncho Billy was a cowboy who could turn his hand to anything from a low comedy to a low murder. Hart was the Good Bad Man, someone who lived outside the law but by a real code. He had a character that could be recognized from one film to the next and he had Joe August as his cameraman, an artist who stayed near the top until his death.
So this early Hart movie helped establish him. It was more than a series of plots that made sense. It was the emergence of a new way of saying things.
