Two episodes of "Wild Bill Hickok" edited together and released as a feature.

In 1953 in the United States, there were more homes without television sets than there were with, so William F. Broidy's Newhall Productions would paste two of the 30-minute episodes of The Wild Bill Hickok TV series together and Allied Artists would sell it as a 60-minute feature to theaters. The first half of "Border City Rustlers" is from an episode in which Wild Bill and his deputy Jingles P. Jones arrive in Green Springs just after the mayor has been killed in a gun battle. The town's Old Maid, Hepsibah, stirs up the other townswomen and is elected mayor. Wild Bill and Jingles help her prove that the local judge is behind the town's reign of terrorism. Wild and Jingles saddle up and ride over to Border City (from the episode called "Border City") to mix it up with a gang of international cattle rustlers where, helped by Consuelo, daughter of a Mexican cattle baron, and her cousin Ramon, the two marshals nab cattle buyer Flint Kirby as the head of the rustlers. Those of us who didn't have TV sets figured Wild Bill and Jingles were twice as good as the usual western heroes as they only took half the usual time to clean up a situation. No, we really didn't. One didn't have to have a telly to figure out these were on-the-cheap productions. The cast order in the theatre-released films is not the same as that shown on the original TV episodes, as Newhall Productions and/or Allied Artists would crunch both casts together to get the better-known names closer to the top.—Les Adams <[email protected]>