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Above, from L-to-R are: Hal Price, Al 'Fuzzy' St. John, Frank Hagney and George Houston as Tom Cameron, the Lone Rider.  Notice the height of Houston who towers over the other players.  'Fuzzy' spent a long time at PRC, initially with Bob Steele in the Billy the Kid series ... then he was with Buster Crabbe who replaced Steele in the Billy the Kid group ... he continued with Crabbe as the series changed names to 'Billy Carson' series ... and he wound up with Al 'Lash' LaRue. (Courtesy of Les Adams) Above from L-to-R are Al 'Fuzzy' St. John, Houston and Dennis Moore. Houston's white hoss was named 'Lightning'.

Some further background on Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC):  when the Lone Rider films were made, PRC was only a few years old, having been initially formed in the late 1930s as Producers Pictures, and then Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC).  Some of their initial western entries starred Tim McCoy, who was in the twilight of his career and a year or so away from his work at Monogram in the Rough Riders trio series.  Sigmund Neufeld was a PRC executive and producer who was in charge of their western product, and quite often, those films were directed by his brother, Sam Newfield (real name: Sam Neufeld).  In fact, Newfield became one of the more important and prolific of the PRC "house directors".  This same brother team did the Buster Crabbe series, the Frontier Marshals trio westerns, and more at PRC.  Interestingly, director Newfield used his own name as well as several aliases (Sherman Scott and Peter Stewart).  Why his own name along with the Scott and Stewart names?  There's a couple possibilities:

• Newfield had been involved in films and directing since the silent days, and he had a reputation for doing quickies, cheapies, really low-budget flicks.  Newfield's name may have had a negative connotation to PRC's distributors and the movie house owners that ran their films.  Thus, the Scott and Stewart aliases were used to fool 'em into thinking that someone else was the director.
• Another possible explanation is that the Scott and Stewart names were used to indicate that little PRC was chock full of directors, thus implying it was much larger than reality.

Was Sam Newfield (1899-1964) a "bad" director?  The answer is a qualified no!  He was a director who survived (perhaps thrived) in the world of programmer features, and was able to churn out scads of films --- some good and some bad --- under extreme budgetary and time constraints.  In later life, Newfield would work on TV shows such as CAPTAIN GALLANT OF THE FOREIGN LEGION (with Buster Crabbe) and HAWKEYE (LAST OF THE MOHICANS) with John "Lone Ranger" Hart and Lon Chaney Jr.

A few years after the Lone Rider films, PRC was churning out westerns with singer Eddie Dean and Lash LaRue.  Around 1948, they were merged/absorbed into the Eagle-Lion film organization, and the PRC name disappeared.  Several years later, the B western era was over --- and no one seemed to notice or care as they were too busy being mesmerized by the newfangled television.

  Although some of the data is incomplete or inaccurate, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has information on George Houston, Al 'Fuzzy' St. John, as well as "Sig and Sam", PRC's producer and director brothers.  Click below:

The Internet Broadway database has a half dozen or so plays listed circa 1928-1934 in which Houston performed: http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=45664

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