The Sagebrush Family Trails West (1940)

Begin with setting the record straight for those uninformed sources that insist on tagging this film as a Producers Releasing Corporation entry. It was produced by Sigmund Neufeld's Producers Pictures Corporation and distributed by Producers Distributing Corporation before both became known as PRC (producing and distributing) a few months later in 1940. The PRC name did not yet exist when this film was made, nor does it appear on any of the prints or advertising connected with this film. Neufeld produced this one as the first of a proposed series of films featuring his B-western version of M-G-M's Hardy Family. Heading the cast was 13-year-old World's Champion Junior Cowboy named Bobby Clack, who was well known by that name so Neufeld, for reasons unknown since his use of Clack was to cash in on Clack's rodeo reputation (who had already appeared in two films as Bobby Clack), promptly changed his name to Bobby Clark. Go figure. The film has Bobby Sawyer, 13-year-old World's Champion Junior Cowboy and star of Sawyer's Greater Attractions medicine show, averting the robbery of a bank in Halfway, Texas and the impressed and grateful citizens induce Bobby's parents, Doc and Minerva Sawyer to settle in the town, over the protests of daughter Nellie, who is determined to drag them to the "big city" where she plans on becoming a great star of the theatre. Crafty Lem Gorman, editor of the town newspaper and secret "brain" behind the gang of robbers terrorizing the community, seeing Nellie's attraction for young deputy sheriff Jim Barton, sells the Sawyers a ranch which belongs to his lieutenant Bart Wallace. The ranch is situated over an abandoned mine that serves as the gang's hiding place of their loot. Gorman tells the gang that Barton will not search the ranch where Nellie makes her home. Gorman hadn't figured on Doc Sawyer setting up a laboratory in the hen house situated above the mine and causing an explosion.