Born into affluence in Beverly Hills, Tim Holt grew up on a ranch in Fresno, California, where his father, film star Jack Holt, reigned as "King of the Rodeo". No surprise that the younger Holt should make his biggest impression in cowboy pictures, playing prairie types in The Law West of Tombstone (1938) and in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). After serving with honor in World War II, Holt was cast by Ford as the doomed brother of Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946). Though he appeared in all manner of films (most atypically, as a spoiled heir in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons [1942]), Holt found a niche in westerns, holding his own opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and playing the onscreen son to his real life father The Arizona Ranger (1948). At RKO, Holt made his fortune cranking out inexpensive but solid shoot-em-ups, such as Dynamite Pass (1950). Shot as Dynamite Trail by efficiency director Lew Landers, the programmer pits itinerant cowhand Holt against a cadre of prairie hoodlums (led by John Dehner and Robert Shayne, with Denver Pyle doing the dirty work) and benefits immeasurably from the Lone Pine locations and the evocative black-and-white photography of Nicholas Musuraca, best known for his work in horror (Cat People, The Seventh Victim and film noir (Out of the Past, The Locket).

By Richard Harland Smith