Apart from my three best remembered TV/Movie cowboy heroes, (Roy, Gene and Hoppy), the one I recall the best after only seeing him once or twice back in the Fifties was Lash LaRue. It must have been the impression he made with the all black outfit and of course, the unforgettable bullwhip. "Cheyenne Takes Over" features Lash in his recurring role as Cheyenne Davis, a traveling Marshal who rights various wrongs with the help of sidekick Fuzzy St. John. In this one, Cheyenne smokes out an outlaw who killed a rancher and assumed his identity in order to 'inherit' the property left by an uncle. The twist is that the ranch was left to a pair of brothers, so as one lie leads to another, a fake Wayne Dawson (George Chesebro) tries to stay a step ahead of the good guys with his top henchman McCord (John Merton).
It doesn't take much reflection to realize that the writing on this particular film wasn't very well thought out. It's learned that the fake Dawson killed the real Dawson via flashback as told by the picture's female lead, Nancy Gates. Her character, Fay Wilkins, witnessed the whole thing from the back office of her saloon when the pair arrived after hours and demanded to be served a drink while they argued out a scenario that left the real Dawson dead. Could the fake Dawson have made it any more conspicuous that he just killed someone? Or how about fake Dawson and McCord trying and failing to kill the impostor brother Matt Dawson while on the way to the Dawson ranch - why didn't the bad guys just wait till he got to the ranch to bump him off? He would have been defenseless inside the Dawson home, and no witnesses around for the villains to worry about. I guess audiences of the era weren't that critical, as long as the good guys came out on top.
It's been pointed out many times that Lash Larue bears an uncanny resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, but it's never been more evident than in this flick. If you didn't know better, you'd swear it was Bogey in the lead role. Come to think of it, Nancy Gates, at least in this picture, looked like she could have been a stand-in for Judy Garland. It's a good thing that only Fuzzy could look like Fuzzy.
It doesn't take much reflection to realize that the writing on this particular film wasn't very well thought out. It's learned that the fake Dawson killed the real Dawson via flashback as told by the picture's female lead, Nancy Gates. Her character, Fay Wilkins, witnessed the whole thing from the back office of her saloon when the pair arrived after hours and demanded to be served a drink while they argued out a scenario that left the real Dawson dead. Could the fake Dawson have made it any more conspicuous that he just killed someone? Or how about fake Dawson and McCord trying and failing to kill the impostor brother Matt Dawson while on the way to the Dawson ranch - why didn't the bad guys just wait till he got to the ranch to bump him off? He would have been defenseless inside the Dawson home, and no witnesses around for the villains to worry about. I guess audiences of the era weren't that critical, as long as the good guys came out on top.
It's been pointed out many times that Lash Larue bears an uncanny resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, but it's never been more evident than in this flick. If you didn't know better, you'd swear it was Bogey in the lead role. Come to think of it, Nancy Gates, at least in this picture, looked like she could have been a stand-in for Judy Garland. It's a good thing that only Fuzzy could look like Fuzzy.