Lester F. Scott, Jr. Video

A typical penny-pinching purveyor of Poverty Row action fare, American silent film producer Lester F. Scott, Jr. operated on the outer fringe of the industry, creating fast-paced westerns starring the likes of Wally Wales, Buffalo Bill, Jr. and Buddy... MORE

A typical penny-pinching purveyor of Poverty Row action fare, American silent film producer Lester F. Scott, Jr. operated on the outer fringe of the industry, creating fast-paced westerns starring the likes of Wally Wales, Buffalo Bill, Jr. and Buddy Roosevelt. All of Scott's western heroes were awarded colorful new monikers (Wales, born Floyd T. Alperson, was named after the British heir apparent) and put through their paces by genre specialist Richard Thorpe, a director who well knew that furious action was more important to a young audience than logic and plot development. The westerns were more often than not made on location in sleepy, sun-drenched California towns and villages, and surviving films and stills, if nothing else, provide an intriguing glimpse of a now-vanished rural America where horse-drawn carriages and buck-boards still shared main street with the newly arrived automobile. Lester Scott continued as a poverty-row producer well into the sound era, releasing his little potboilers through grandiosely named fly-by-night organizations such as Empire Pictures Corp., Mayfair and Times Exchange. His final effort seems to have been Daughter of the Tong (1939), a dandy little no-budget melodrama starring faded silent-screen vamp Evelyn Brent. Divorced from actress Irene Hunt, Scott was killed in an automobile accident near Mesa, Arizona. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi LESS