The best James Arness’s western movies

Army despatch rider Hondo Lane discovers a woman and her son living in the midst of warring Apaches, and he becomes their protector.

Two young drifters guide a Mormon wagon train to the San Juan Valley and encounter cutthroats, Indians, geography, and moral challenges on the journey.

Insurance salesman Milford Farnsworth sells a man a life policy only to discover that the man in question is the outlaw Jesse James. Milford is sent to buy back the policy, but is robbed by Jesse. And when Jesse learns that Milford's boss is on the way out with more cash, he plans to rob him too and have Milford get killed in the robbery while dressed as Jesse, and collect on the policy.

Brothers Dan and Neil Hammond return to Texas after the Civil War. Ambitious Dan turns to rustling and then shady land deals to build an empire. Being held for a murder, he is rescued from a lynch mob by Neil, who is now the Marshal, but there is eventually a falling out between the brothers, good triumphing over evil.

Against orders and with no help of relief Texas patriots led by William Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett defend the Alamo against overwhelming Mexican forces.

Ring Hassard and his father Jeff, wild horse breakers, live in a hidden mountain eyrie as Jeff is wanted for a murder he didn't commit. Things change when they take in a lost young lady, Riley Martin, who finds that Ring has "never seen a woman close up." Jeff is injured, Ring runs afoul of horse thieves and the law, and Riley (who is a lawyer) labors to clear the Hassards (who others would prefer dead).

Western starring Joel McCrea as a law enforcement officer who goes undercover and pretends to be an outlaw.

Zeb Macahan, a pioneering westerner, help's move his brother's family to the wild west. They run into several obstacles including the breakout of the Civil War. This sends the father back to fight in the war and leaves the family to move on ahead.

In 1869, the United States begins a railroad mail service to the West Coast which proves highly tempting to train robbers, in particular an organized gang with one of the mail's supposed guardians in their pay. Prizefighter Steve Davis, a former army intelligence man, is hired to track down the gang and save the Territorial Mail Service. Steve goes undercover in territorial prison, leans Morse Code from a fellow prisoner, breaks jail, infiltrates the gang...and finds time to romance dance-hall singer Mary, who proves to have hidden depths...

Packaged and sold as an outdoor actioner, Many Rivers to Cross is as much a comedy as anything else. Robert Taylor stars as 18th century trapper Bushrod Gentry, who is himself entrapped into marriage by the spunky Mary Stuart Cherne (Eleanor Parker). Escaping his marital responsibilities (which were impressed upon him on threat of death), Gentry heads into the North Country, with Mary in hot pursuit. Hero and heroine spend the rest of the picture taking turns rescuing each other from hostile Indians. Some of the humor is predicated upon the wholesale slaughter of the "redskins", and as such is a bit hard to take when seen today. Supporting Taylor and Parker are Victor McLaglen as the heroine's burly father, and TV-stars-to be James Arness (Gunsmoke) and Russell Johnson and Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan's Island).

Man is framed & sent to toughest prison in the territory.

An outlaw is left for dead by his gang after being shot. A year later, he is released from jail with one thing on his mind: Revenge.

Kirby Frye, a former Confederate officer but now a Union Cavalry scout, is sent into Montana territory to locate and retrieve three Gatling Guns stolen from the U.S. Arsenal by outlaws believed to have taken them west to sell to the Soiux and Cheyenne. The trail leads him to Red Bluff where, aided by Claire Corville, he and the audience discover together and real quick like that Martin Gavin, a supposedly-honest operator of a freight line, has the guns and intends to exchange them to the Indians for furs.

Retired marshal Matt Dillon tracks Arizona rustlers and lands in the middle of the 1880s Pleasant Valley War.

For thirty years, Marshall Matt Dillon fought to preserve the law in Dodge City… now, he's wanted for murder and fighting to clear his name. Three deputies ride up with a warrant for Dillon's arrest, a wealthy mine operator has been gunned down in cold blood and an eyewitness says Dillon was the murderer.

At the turn of the century Rose and ex-showbiz friend Molly get involved in selling steel. When they come unstuck with corsets they embark on the even more hazardous project of selling barbed wire to highly suspicious Texas cowboys.