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Prime Times Armchair Cowboys Hey, pardner! If you want to saddle up with the old B westerns starring Tom Mix, Johnny Mack Brown and Bob Steele, come on over to the Old Time Western Film Club By Jim Schlosser for The Associated Press SILER CITY, N.C. � The front reel on the projector is almost empty. On the screen, the bad guy is getting a licking from the good guy, Johnny Mack Brown, who is playing a cowboy named Jim. The bad hombre shot Jim in the shoulder earlier in the film, but there�s not a rip in Jim�s shirt or a wisp of blood. Jim subdues the bad guy and gallops back to his wife. He�s sure she�s dead. The bad guy shot her, too. Throughout "The Crooked Trail," filmed in 1932, guns blaze. But six-shooters never need reloading, whether six shots are fired or 10 or 15. "When we get people here for the first time," Milo Holt, the projectionist, whispers from his seat in the middle of the audience, "we ask them to stay behind at the end to help pick up the bullets." Back on screen, Johnny Mack Brown gingerly approaches his Helen. Her eyes open. She looks up and smiles. "Helen, I thought ...," Brown says. "No, Jim," she says, voice rising. "I�m just beginning to live." The screen goes dark and applause ripples across the room. The lights come on. This ends the morning part of the Old Time Western Film Club�s quarterly get-together. The mostly male audience, some in cowboy outfits, have ridden long and hard to reach Charlie�s Music Barn, near Siler City in central North Carolina. They rendezvous four times a year on the last Saturday of the month to watch old movies that modern critics would surely pelt with verbal tomatoes. The films all seem laden with such lines as: "Reach high, you hombres!" "Saddle up, boys! Outlaws!" "Let�s get a rope!" When the going gets tough, the good guy declines help, declaring, "There are times when a man has to ride alone, and this is one of them." Critics would exhaust their supply of negative comments before Holt would run out of films. Between the early 1930s and early 1950s, Hollywood cranked out thousands of these "B westerns." Holt has a huge collection. "B" stands for the films� low budget. These films lasted no more than an hour. The earliest couldn�t afford music, which is fine with Holt "because I like to hear the wind, the birds." He says so many B westerns were made during World War II that, in the rush, crews forgot to cover tire tracks on horse trails for films set in the 1870s. Airplanes flew overhead, and electric wires showed up in backgrounds. The films are family-friendly. The good guy goes to barrooms, but it�s to knock bad buys over tables, never to knock down drinks. The movies contain no sex, swearing or bloodletting. When shot, characters clasp a hand over their injury. Or they tumble off horses. "You see some who die in the first chapter are back in chapter three," says Nikki Ellerbe of Raleigh, who�s wearing a gray felt cowboy hat with a black band, like Gene Autry wore. This is the club�s 30th year. Holt, 73, who members describe as "Gabby Hayes without the beard," started it in Siler City after buying a projector and inviting neighbors to his house to sample his B-western collection. Word spread, and soon the house was too small for the gatherings. Out under a lonesome pine, around a picnic table, a confab takes place among a group within the club, the Ed White Chapter of the Western Film Preservation Society. It grew out of a noncredit course on western movies at North Carolina State. The society members are eager to share trivia about B-western lead actors, such as Johnny Mack Brown, Tom Mix, Bob Steele and Sunset Carson. And they want to talk about the actors who rose from B westerns to become big-time western stars: Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, John Wayne, Walter Brennan and William Boyd, who played Hopalong Cassidy. Did you know, members ask, Robert Mitchum started in B westerns? So did Claude Aikens and Rita Hayworth. Bob Steele went on to play Duffy in the 1960s TV series "F Troop," and was the voice of Mr. Ed, the talking horse in an other series. Did you know that B westerns had a black cowboy star, Herb Jefferies, "the Bronze Buckaroo," as he was billed? John Sparks, a retired Greensboro accountant and charter film club member, says he likes best the opening of each movie when the cast is listed. "You�ll often see someone who is a supporting star who becomes a big star later," he says. The Old Time Western Film Club membership ranges from those who just love movies, such as Sparks, to those who watch only cowboy movies, such as Ellerbe, who watches 10 to 12 a week. The club mourns the loss of its most passionate member, Hardy Horne of Dunn, who died last year at 57. Horne, a truck driver, collected 5,000 western films, plus posters and other paraphernalia. His house became a virtual museum. Every room was covered with items Horne traded for or bought at flea markets. He wore his six-shooters to club meetings and was buried wearing his cowboy hat. His widow, Carrie Horne, comes to meetings. She sets up a table and sells posters and tapes from her husband�s collection. Club members say B westerns link them to their boyhood. "I didn�t get to see many B westerns, but when I did I thought they were the best thing I�d ever seen," says Seth Henderson, a retired school superintendent who drives 250 miles for club meetings. "You don�t see the best acting, but it was good enough for a 12-year-old boy, and I guess it�s good enough for a 75-year-old man." These men could stay home and watch tapes or the all-western movie channel. But that would miss the point, Milo Holt says. "If you grew up with these movies, it puts you back like it used to be, watching them with a group of people on a big screen. TV just hasn�t got it." The Old Time Western Film Club doesn�t charge admission to its movies. The hat is passed to pay for the costs, including stamps Holt needs to mail 250 quarterly news letters. He addresses each by hand. He won�t mind addressing a few more. He can be reached at Box 142, Siler City, N.C. 27540. If you forget his name and address, write anyway. "I get mail addressed to �That Old Cowboy Fan,"� he says. "The post office knows me." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.