(From Old Corral collection)

Lash and Fuzzy then moved to Screen Guild, later Realart, with producer Ron Ormand where their movies were billed as 'A Western Adventure Production', starting with DEAD MAN'S GOLD, MARK OF THE LASH, FRONTIER REVENGE (all 1948); OUTLAW COUNTRY, SON OF BILLY THE KID, SON OF A BADMAN (all 1949); KING OF THE BULLWHIP, THE DALTON'S WOMEN (both 1950); THE THUNDERING TRAIL, THE VANISHING OUTPOST (both 1951); THE BLACK LASH and THE FRONTIER PHANTOM (both 1952). In those films, the Cheyenne Davis moniker was dropped and Lash played a character with his own name. There was one exception - Lash was 'Marshal Jack Garrett', the son of lawman Pat Garrett, in SON OF BILLY THE KID (1949). He said he never liked the name, Al, and actually changed his name to Lash.  "Even my mother calls me 'Lash' ", he said.  And Fuzzy exchanged his brown horse for a pinto.  Most of his movies featured a fight-ending blow in which Lash would seem to jump into the air and strike downward with a knockout punch.  It wouldn't have been effective in a real fight, Lash confessed.  "But it looked good!"  At a festival where he and frequent adversary Terry Frost were watching one of their films, Frost asked, "Did we really do that fight?"  Lash assured him that they had: "They were too cheap to hire doubles!" Lash said he always made sure his hat came off in fights, so audiences could see that it was really him and not a stuntman. Producer Ron Ormond did some other sagebrush flicks during the final years of the B western programmer - click here and here for examples.

(From Old Corral collection) Above is a lobby card from Lash's FRONTIER REVENGE (Ron Ormond/Western Adventure, 1948). Below is a crop from the still used for that lobby card. (Courtesy of Pat LaRosa) Above from left to right are Al St. John, bartender Cliff Taylor (who was producer Ron Ormond's father-in-law), Lash Larue, Ray Bennett and bearded barfly Jack Evans. That's moustached Lee Morgan leaning on the bar behind Bennett. (Courtesy of Les Adams) Above are John 'Bob' 'Lefty' Cason and Lash LaRue in mortal combat in a lobby card from MARK OF THE LASH (Ron Ormand/Screen Guild, 1948). (From Old Corral collection) Above - Cason and Lash are battlling it out (upper right) in this title lobby card from DEAD MAN'S GOLD (Ron Ormand/Screen Guild, 1948). (Courtesy of Larry Welch) Above are Fuzzy St. John (on a paint) and Lash LaRue in another lobby card from DEAD MAN'S GOLD (Ron Ormand/Screen Guild, 1948). (From Old Corral collection) Above - Lash battles it out with Archie Twitchell (AKA Michael Brandan / Brandon / Branden) in THE VANISHING OUTPOST (Ron Ormand/Screen Guild, 1951). U.S. Air Force Captain Archie Twitchell worked for Douglas Aircraft and was the co-pilot on a test flight of a Douglas DC-7B airplane. He was killed in a mid-air collision with an Air Force fighter plane on January 31, 1957.

(Courtesy of Minard Coons)

Economies were obvious in many of these pictures where scenes were re-used, sometimes making youthful audiences think they'd seen a new movie before when they saw the often-repeated footage, for instance, of Lash sneaking up on the outlaws' hideout and using the whip to jerk guard Bud Osborne backwards over a wagon wheel. THE BLACK LASH re-used many scenes from the earlier FRONTIER REVENGE, at one point necessitating an obvious double for Jim Bannon, a bad guy from the first movie whose character had to say a few words for a transition scene in the new one.  Peggy Stewart plays the same role in both, but is a secret agent with the good guys the first time and one of the villains in the second. Perhaps the most obvious re-use of footage came in Lash's last series western, THE FRONTIER PHANTOM, which was basically him telling the story of OUTLAW COUNTRY to some lawmen so they would let him complete his mission of hunting down some bad guys.  In those movies, Lash played both his own character and his wayward twin brother, Frontier Phantom, a gimmick also used in the Lash LaRue comic books.  OUTLAW COUNTRY was among Lash's favorites of his movies. THE DALTON'S WOMEN had Lash and Fuzzy billed far down in the cast, and was marketed almost as a girlie show with scantily-clad females having saloon fights and such. But it was basically a Lash LaRue western. KING OF THE BULLWHIP had Lash battling it out with a masked bullwhip-expert bandit called El Azote, climaxing in a bullwhip fight used over the credits and at the climax. Lash said they filmed it in an afternoon, something unheard of with present-day filming schedules. Following the end of his movie series, Lash made personal appearances across the country, played various roles in TV series such as 26 MEN, JUDGE ROY BEAN and THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WYATT EARP. In the WYATT EARP TV westerns, LaRue portrayed Johnny Behan, a sheriff sympathetic to the outlaw faction in Tombstone. However, LaRue and star Hugh O'Brian did not get along, and Lash eventually relinquished the role to Steve Brodie. In the early 1950s, he hosted the fifteen minute LASH OF THE WEST TV series, which incorporated bits and pieces from his earlier films. In the 1980s, he appeared in a couple of independently-produced films, THE DARK POWER and ALIEN OUTLAW, as well as brief appearance in the TV remake of STAGECOACH with Johnny Cash (one of his fans) and Waylon Jennings.  Lash recalled how Johnny introduced him to one of Johnny's family members as 'the original man in black'. Lash LaRue passed away on May 21, 1996 due to coronary artery and arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease at the Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California. Newspaper obituaries noted that LaRue also suffered from emphyzema and had recently undergone triple bypass heart surgery.

The Motion Picture Herald and Boxoffice polls were conducted from about the mid 1930s through the mid 1950s.  With a few exceptions, the annual poll results would list the Top Ten (or Top Five) cowboy film stars.  In most cases, the winners were what you would expect - Autry, Rogers, Holt, Starrett, Hoppy, etc.  Note that only a couple of PRC's western heroes ever attained a ranking in those polls - Eddie Dean was ranked in 1946 and 1947 and Tex Ritter made the list in 1944 and 1945 while in the Texas Ranger series.  Lash LaRue never achieved a Top Ten ranking in those polls.