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.

The 8th and final film in "Lash" La Rue's series for producer Jerry Thomas and Producers Releasing Corporation. This one finds the overworked U. S. Marshal "Cheyenne" Davis ("Lash" La Rue) ordered to take a vacation by his boss. Naturally, his sidekick "Fuzzy" Jones (Al St. John), who may or may have been a certified U. S. Marshal himself, knows the perfect place to go on a vacation...the El Lobo Ranch.Once there, whatever vacation-delights the El Lobo Ranch may have once offered are no longer in sight and one has suspicions about the credentials of the travel agent Fuzzy consulted. El Lobo ranch looks like a condo-swap south of Laredo. Cheyenne and Fuzzy are greeted by ranch-foreman Buck McCord (John Merton) who, rudely like, tells them to hit the trail.They hit the trail for town--just a film-cut and a short-gallop insert away---and meet saloon-owner Fay Wilkins (Nancy Gates, biding her time at PRC between the end of her RKO days and better work elsewhere)and she tells them some local gossip concerning the El Lobo Ranch (former dude-ranch vacation resort, if Fuzzy's travel agent is believed.) Seems that the present owner, Wayne Dawson (George Chesebro), was seen talking to a stranger one day, and the stranger has disappeared and has never been seen again. From this little tidbit of information, "Cheyenne" deduces that the stranger was none other than the original owner Wayne Dawson (Marshall Reed)whom the current owner known as Wayne Dawson killed and has hidden the body. This is a pivotal point and comes as no surprise to most of us in the front-row to learn that George Chesebro was impersonating a dead man...who got dead because George Chesebro killed him.Knowing something and proving it are two different animals so, in order to get the goods on the fake Wayne Dawson, "Cheyenne" hires an actor named Delhaven (Lee Morgan)to go out to the El Lobo Ranch and pretend he is the murdered man's brother, Matt Dawson, and ask Dawson to produce a certain belt that his supposed brother always wore. (Back off...we mentioned the plot has a few holes,including the thought that Lee Morgan could actually impersonate an actor.)Marshall Reed appears again as a cabin-henchman, a character that has no relation to the character he played for a few frames earlier in the film, but Reed was there on a Day-contract and producer Jerry Thomas was never known not to get a full day's work out of Day-Contract players, even if they had to play two (or more) characters.Well, no need to report, the exposure scheme cooked up by "Lash" semi-works but not before Chesebro and henchie friends provide "Lash" with a working vacation.Nancy Gates moves this'un up a couple of notches on the "Lash" La Rue PRC meter-ratings, but the plot takes those and another four points away.

I just saw this movie last night which I may or may not have seen when I was a kid. All I can remember is that on tv in the early fifties he was a popular figure. I remember seeing him quite often but I don't remember those storylines, the acting or the production values. It was a treat seeing him again but I can wait a long time before seeing another. This was about as low-budget as you can get and the acting was like a school play. What puzzles me is why everyone remembers him. He did not make many movies and the ones that he did were very forgetful. It must have been the black outfit, the whip and a resemblance to Humphrey Bogart.