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Friday, 20 March 2015

Wild West Photo Friday: Real Outlaws in Western Movies


This dusty gunman is Al Jennings, a lawyer from Oklahoma who became a bandit in the 1890s. He had a brief career of robbing banks and stores before getting injured in a shootout with the law and sent to prison. When he got out, he went back to being a lawyer and even ran for governor of Oklahoma!

When his political career didn't pan out, he decided to make movies where he played himself. Westerns had become a popular genre in the early silent films and he wasn't the only real-life bandit to sully the silver screen. You can read more in my post for Black Gate about Wild West Outlaws in Silent Film.

 This image is a still from the film The Lady of the Dugout (1918) and is in the public domain.
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4 comments:

  1. Alex J. Cavanaugh20 March 2015 at 06:32

    He played himself - how wild. And from lawyer to bandit to lawyer again is quite the 360.

    ReplyDelete
  2. sapperjoe21 March 2015 at 18:01

    Hello! Great minds think alike...well, maybe I just sort of an odd lucky entry on my blog. I posted an entry a little over a week ago about Emmett Dalton & Henry Starr as Wild West bank robbers and being movie stars too.

    http://sapperjoeswargamingtoys.blogspot.com/2015/03/emmett-dalton-henry-starrbank-robbers.html

    Cheers,

    Joe

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sean McLachlan22 March 2015 at 00:37

    Cool post, Joe, thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  4. sapperjoe25 March 2015 at 18:20

    Hello, Sean

    I am placing my reply to your question on my blog here as well, just in case. I am only aware of some movie still / lobby cards for the movie to still to exist. See the link below:

    http://www.moviestillsdb.com/movies/a-debtor-to-the-law-i10059

    Cheers

    Joe

    ReplyDelete