The best Russell Johnson’s western movies

Jim Harvey is hired to guard a small wagon train as it makes its way west. The train is attacked by Indians and Harvey, hoping to persuade Aguila, the chief, to call off the attack due to Harvey's having saved his son's life, leaves the train to negotiate. He is captured and the rest of the train is wiped out except for two sisters. Escaping and showing up in town later, Harvey is nearly hanged as a deserter, but gets away. Eventually caught by the sheriff and his posse, they are attacked by Indians. This time the Indians are defeated and Aguila, captured and dying, reveals the identity of the white man who engineered the initial attack on the wagon train, just as the perpetrator rides up behind them.

19th-century army officer Lance Caldwell is assigned to Fort King in the Everglades. Immediately clashing with his commanding officer Major Dade, Caldwell opposes Dade's plans to wipe out the Seminole Indians. The fact that Caldwell was the boyhood chum of Seminole chief Osceola is all the more reason to resist Dade's genocidal policies. After a deadly confrontation which costs dozens of lives on both sides, Osceola rescues Caldwell, whereupon the latter is court-martialed. Later on, Osceola comes to Fort King to talk peace, and is promptly killed by persons unknown. An attempt is made to frame Caldwell for the killing, but the truth eventually prevails.

In the weeks prior to the start of the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers hope to help their cause by inciting a Navajo war in the New Mexico Territory. Director Frederick de Cordova's 1953 western stars Audie Murphy, Robert Sterling, Joan Evans, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver, Palmer Lee, Jack Kelly, James Best, Bob Steele and Ralph Moody.

There's a new doctor in old Santa Fe, and it's Greer Garson. Director Mervyn LeRoy's 1955 western also stars Dana Andrews, Cameron Mitchell, Lois Smith, Walter Hampden, Pedro Gonzales-Gonzales, Earl Holliman, Adele Jergens, Robert Wilke, Frank DeKova, Nick Adams, Douglas Kennedy, Ralph Moody and Louise Lorimer.

A young railroad surveyor returns to his hometown to find the man who murdered his father and brother.

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).

Pat Garrett arrives in Abilene where he catches five of Butch Cassidy's gang. He calls in Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson and they learn there is a half million dollar shipment of money arriving by train and Cassidy is amassing enough men to take it.

Sheriff Lane Dakota captures robbery-murder suspect Greiner just as the latter is wounded in an Apache ambush. At remote outpost Apache River, Lane and his prisoner spend the night with other travelers, including 2 women with a surprising number of fancy dresses. In the morning, who should appear but a band of ostensibly peaceful Apaches strayed from the reservation. And bigoted Colonel Morsby is strongly inclined to shoot first and ask questions afterward...

Ex-army sergeant Jed Givens and his gang rob an army payroll shipment led by Lt. Hemp Brown. Givens kills a civilian woman and all the soldiers, leaving Brown alive to face a military tribunal in which he is branded a coward, stripped of all insignia and drummed out of the army. Brown sets out to track down Givens in an effort to clear his name.