Posters promoting two (of 15) 1938 films made by Universal Studios that depicted the adventures of Tom Grant, a gold prospector “out west.” The Pamplin Collection has one of the largest collections of early movie posters in the country, adding several dozen to its holdings every year.
Category: Western
Rough Customer
by Burt Proctor (1901-1980, American). Proctor became a painter of western landscape and of cowhand scenes with men on horseback. Much of his painting was done in his leisure time afforded by his early career as mining engineer and later as a successful commercial illustrator. Of his early talent, it was said he painted horses…
Home on the Range
by Lon Magargee (1883-1960, American). At age 13, Magargee ran away from his upper-class Pennsylvania home and went West in 1896, led by his zest for the wild and adventuresome life. Here he established a reputation as a cowboy painter and illustrator with work most associated with Arizona Brewing Company ads featuring humorous aspects of…
Santa Fe Rides (1937)
The Transcontinental Broadcasting Company sends a sound truck and equipment to a ranch to obtain an audition from “Santa Fe” Evans and his musical cowboys (Oscar Gahan, Lloyd Perryman, Robert “Curley” Hoag, Rudy Sooter and Sherry Tansey.) Carver, arch enemy of Evans and a rival for the love of Carol Sheldon, fails in an attempt…
Gun Play (1935)
Intercepting Holt’s mail, Meeker learns a gold treasure is somewhere on the Holt ranch and he sees the clue to its location. When he solves the puzzle he learns the treasure location can be found in the boots. But he earlier discarded the supposedly worthless boots and seeing Bill Williams now wearing them, he and…
Cowboys from Texas (1939)
Texas has opened up land for homesteaders. Clay Allison wants their land and has his men led by Plummer try to start a range war between them and the ranchers. With each side suspecting the other of their problems, the Mesquiteers realize someone else is responsible. Stony suspects Plummer and fakes leaving the Mesquiteers to…
Buck Jones
The Pamplin Collection owns one of the largest western movie poster collections in private hands. Here is a poster of “Outlawed Guns,” starring the “B” western star Buck Jones. Although born in Indiana, Jones reportedly (but disputedly) grew up on a ranch near Red Rock, Oklahoma were he learned to ride and shoot, skills that…
Western
Buffalo rifles, the legendary “Big Gun” on the northern Plains. The weight and length of the barrels provided supreme accuracy and killing power. These were the types of guns that nearly extinguished the great buffalo herds in the 1880s and 1890s. The painting of Sioux buffalo hunters, The Hunters, show hunters using a lance and…