The best Esther Dale’s western movies

Sam and George strike gold in Alaska. George sends Sam to Seattle to bring George's fiancé back to Alaska. Sam finds she is already married, and returns instead with Angel. Sam, after trying to get George and Angel together, finally romances Angel, who, in the meantime, is busy fighting off the advances of George's younger brother, Billy.

After his wife dies in childbirth, a doctor (Joel McCrea) settles down in the small Oklahoma town of Cherokee Wells to raise his newborn daughter. Unfortunately, not all the citizens there are hospitable, especially when the doctor hires a pretty Indian teenager (Gloria Talbott) as his child's nanny. Directed by Francis D. Lyon and released in 1957, this western also stars Barbara Hale, Brad Dexter, Verna Felton, Esther Dale, Douglas Dick, Michael Pate, Sheb Wooley, Ray Teal, Mimi Gibson and Anthony Caruso.

This historical drama tells the story of the first class to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In the early 19th Century, Congress appropriated the money to build the school, but opponents who believed it to be an illegitimate expansion of the powers of the federal government decided to sabotage the school. They put the hard-as-nails Major Sam Carter in charge of the academy, and he ruthlessly put the recruits through grueling training -- until only ten prospective soldiers remained. They include Dawson, a patriotic farm boy and Howard Shelton, a selfish playboy who has come to West Point only because of its prestige. The two vie for Carolyn Bainbridge, while they, along with the other eight, try convince Carter that the school is worth keeping.