The Racket and Horizons West

(I've recently seen both films, made by Robert Ryan in the early 50's. They make a great double feature.)

One of the joys of watching films from the late 40’s and early 50’s is seeing actors I am familiar with from the TV shows I grew up with in the 60’s early in their careers, before they got the roles that made them famous. Robert Ryan made two very good films in 1951-52 that feature casts loaded with future TV stars. “The Racket” is the first and “Horizons West” is the second.

Here’s who I spotted in The Racket:
- William Tallman playing the valiant officer Johnson and Ray Collins playing the corrupt DA. The irony is that they would reverse those positons six years later on Perry Mason with Tallman playing DA Hamilton Burger and Collins playing Police Lt. Tragg.
- William Conrad, playing a corrupt and cynical cop 20 years before Cannon and very shortly before he became radio’s Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke.
- Don Porter, later Ann Sothern’s boss and Gidget’s dad as the smooth but sleazy secretary to the unseen “Old Man” who runs the rackets.
- Harry Lauter of “Tales of the Texas Rangers” and also many western bad guy roles as a patrolman.
- Herb Vigran, the perennial bartender as the nervous owner of a club where Liz Scott sings.
- And, of course, there is the one scene appearance of the great Milburn Stone, TV’s Doc Adams on Gunsmoke, as another of Tremayne’s staff, describing their efforts to bring down the syndicate. I would like to have seen more of him, perhaps in Tremayne’s role.
- Also: Walter Sande, (the desk sergeant) and Les Tremaine, (investigator of the crime commission), who played dozens of roles in many TV shows but never got starring roles of their own. I’ve also seen Brett King (Joe Scanlon), Don Beddoe, (a member of Tremayne’s team), Howard Petrie, (the Governor), Walter Reed, (one of the cops in the roll call) and Richard Reeves, (a typical role as a gunsel) in many a 50’s-60’s TV show. Tremayne was also one of the most famous voice-over announcers ever.

And you can see these familiar TV faces in “Horizon’s West”:
- James Arness, three years before he began a 20 year career of playing TV’s Matt Dillon along with Dennis Weaver, TV’s Chester, who shares no scenes with Arness but dies in a hail of bullets shortly after Ryan dispatches Arness by the same method. Weaver here is a trigger-happy gunsel.
- Raymond Burr, five years before he became TV’s Perry Mason, in a then typical bad guy role as a northern carpetbagger who has put together an empire in Texas but is bested by Ryan who absorbs Burr’s fiefdom and creates a bigger one for himself.
- John McIntyre, eight years before he took over for Ward Bond ion Wagon train, playing the father of Ryan and Rock Hudson.
- Francis Bavier, eight years before she started playing Aunt Bea on the Andy Griffith Show, as McIntyre’s wife and the brother’s mother.
- Julie Adams, who starred in several 50’s movies, became a frequent TV guest star and eventually a semi-regular on Murder She Wrote as the Cabot Cove’s leading real estate agent.
- Also: Douglas Fowley, who played Doc Holliday on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp as one of Burr’s gunsels who turns on him when Ryan takes over and Walter Reed, who appeared in dozens of TV westerns and crime show , as a dispossessed rancher who gains his revenge on Ryan in the end.




The past is a series of presents. The present is living history we are privileged to witness