A surprising name in Hollywood holds the record for the most starring roles in the Western movie genre as one character. The vast majority of Westerns are standalone adventures, but there are some that grew into franchises, allowing their star to reprise their role and live to see more shootouts, saloon brawls, and train robberies.
Multiple actors have played the same character more than once in Westerns, with Eastwood portraying the poncho-wearing Man With No Name in all three installments in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. Then there’s Yul Brynner, who starred in multiple Magnificent Seven movies.
Over the years, Hollywood has seen a long list of profitable Western movie franchises, but most either don’t run for very long or change leading actors after a time. However, that wasn’t the case for the Columbia Pictures movie series that starred Charles Starrett.
Charles Starrett Starred As The Durango Kid In A Long-Running Western Movie Series
In 1940, Charles Starrett played the тιтular lead in The Durango Kid, a black-and-white B-movie Western from Columbia Pictures. Directed by Fred F. Sears, the movie was a bit of a vigilante Western story, akin to the likes of Zorro and The Lone Ranger, in that its main character was a hero who hid his true idenтιтy.
Charles Starrett’s Bill Lowry was a seemingly ordinary man in a Western town who had a double life as the Durango Kid, a heroic gunfighter. He balanced his two lives by investigating a crime as Bill Lowry and diving into action as The Durango Kid.
The Durango Kid did fairly well in theaters, but didn’t immediately lead to any follow-ups. Five years later, though, Columbia Pictures elected to make a sequel – Return of the Durango Kid – with Charles Starrett back in the leading role. The film featured different characters, but followed a similar formula in terms of the plot, but rebranded his civilian idenтιтy as “Steve Reynolds.”
It was the success of this film that prompted Columbia Pictures to create a movie series for Starrett’s character. Return of the Durango Kid was followed by a long list of Starret-led Westerns about the Durango Kid, all with тιтles that didn’t signify their ᴀssociation with the series, such as South of the Chisolm Trail, Six-Gun Law, and Last Days of Boot Hill.
The Durango Kid series had a few recurring cast members, the most notable of which being Smiley Burnette, who played the hero’s sidekick in dozens of the movies in the series. He didn’t appear in all of them, though.
Each Durango Kid movie featured a different cast, and oddly gave Starrett’s character a different surname. In every movie, “Steve” had some sort of a villain to defeat, and a female love interest to save. All were standalone Western stories, with none of the plotlines carrying over from film to film.
How Charles Starrett Was Able To Make 65 Durango Kid Westerns In 12 Years
Charles Starrret’s run as the Durango Kid ended in 1952 with the Kid From Broken Gun when he was ready to give up his film career. By this point, Starrett had set a record that would never be broken. With Columbia Pictures, Starrett had made a whopping total of 65 Durango Kid Westerns. No Western movie series under one studio in Hollywood history has lasted that long.
By today’s standards, 65 Westerns in 12 years for one franchise sounds inconceivable. But it’s important to note that the production values attached to the Durango Kid films made this sort of release strategy plausible. Plus, Starrett was under contract with Columbia Pictures during this time, so he had no other movies in his schedule to take away from his time once the series fully kicked off in 1945.
Making as many as 11 movies a year was likely demanding, but not impossible since Durango Kid movies weren’t as long as standard Westerns. Most ran close to 60 minutes long, and as B-movie Westerns, they were somewhat cheap and easy to produce for the studio, and popular enough to justify multiple entries into the series per year.
The Durango Kid Series Also Accounts For Less Than Half Of Charles Starrett’s Western Movies
The Durango Kid will always be the foundation of Charles Starrett’s legacy. However, that’s not to say they alone define his contributions to the genre. They make up the biggest portion of his career in the film industry, but he was a veteran of the Western genre long before he ever donned the Durango Kid costume.
Beginning in the mid-1930s, Columbia Pictures began utilizing Charles Starrett as the leading actor in many of their B-movie Westerns. He typically played straightforward heroic roles, making a variety of Westerns for them on a consistent basis. But though most of roles were extremely similar, they were all different people – until 1945.
In total, Charles Starrett headlined 131 Western movies. With silent film legend Tom Mix appearing in over 200 Westerns, Starrett falls short of the record of most starring roles in Westerns. That said, there isn’t anyone – including Tom Mix – who can claim that they’ve played the exact same Western hero in over 60 Hollywood movies.
