When “English Nightingale” Kitty Rivers tries to leave Silver City, Arizona to escape the amorous attention of corrupt and cruel Sheriff Jake Mannen, her stagecoach is held up by Mannen cohorts Frank McCloskey and Shot-gun Keeler and their gang. Before McCloskey can take her back to Silver City, however, a stranger rides up and forces the outlaws to give up their guns. Impressed by her rescuer, Kitty voluntarily returns to Silver City, where he is headed, only to discover that he is Clay Tallant, her fiancé Orin’s brother. After McCloskey, who has been accused of robbing the stagecoach, coldbloodedly shoots and kills the town marshal and then escapes, Mayor Ed Comstock asks Clay to take over the job and arrest Keeler and the other outlaws. Although Clay successfully stares down and arrests Keeler, Mannen’s crooked judge soon frees them. Disgusted by this political “reality,” Clay refuses Comstock’s offer until he hears that Mannen threatened Orin because of Kitty. Clay’s first deed as marshal is to write an ordinance forbidding the carrying of guns in town. To counter the new law, Mannen hires gunfighter Tex Randolph to “take care” of Clay, but once Tex meets his brave and upfront opponent, he declines to kill him and later becomes his deputy. After several failed attempts on Clay’s life, which include an ambush in which Orin kills McCloskey, Mannen traps Clay, Tex and Orin in a burning jail and then murders their servant Pompey when he tries to run for help. Saved by the townspeople, Tex, Orin and Clay, who has given up Kitty for his brother’s sake, challenge their foes in the rising smoke. Mannen takes aim at Clay from above, but a mysterious black woman shoots Mannen with a rifle. After the battle, the black woman mourns at the gravesites, then follows behind as Clay leaves the reformed Silver City with Kitty at his side. More on Wikipedia or Mubi
Watch The Arizonian (1935)
