Texas Guinan Double Feature: Stampede (1921)(Silent) / The Gun Woman (1918) (Silent) (DVD)

Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan (1884-1933) left the state from which she took her name as a teenager with dreams of becoming a movie star. Her crass, brazen personality, forged in poverty, made this harder than she expected, but her leggy figure guaranteed her regular work as a chorus girl on Broadway. Moonlighting in vaudeville, she developed a cowgirl character that caught the attention of Hollywood, and was cast in her first film, The Wildcat (1917). Over the next few years, Texas would star in close to 50 pictures (though she liked to brag it was 300), all Westerns, leading movie magazines to dub her "The Queen of the West". Her fiercely independent, no-nonsense persona served as a prototype for femme fatales like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Texas, always too smart for her own good, quickly grew bored with Hollywood. When Prohibition was introduced, she opened a popular speakeasy in New York, the 300 Club, famous for its scantily-clad dancers. Guinan became one of the city's biggest celebrities, and her tangles with the law made headlines (though whether because of a corrupt police force or her own ingenuity, she never actually served a jail sentence.) Eventually tiring of dueling with the NYPD, she launched a traveling burlesque show in Europe. While on the road, she died from an epidemic of amoebic dysentery -- Ironically, a month before Prohibition was repealed.

The Gun Woman (Silent, BW, 1918): The most popular saloon in the mining town of La Mesa is run by "The Tigress". Hard-edged and cynical, she thinks nothing of the suitors who routinely throw themselves at her feet. But when a handsome stranger arrives in town, the Tigress is won over by his innocent idealism. Abandoning her wicked ways, she lends him money to purchase a place to settle down. To her shock, he instead uses it to open his own dance hall on the other side of town. Her heart broken, the Tigress swears revenge, and heaven help anyone who stands in her way. Director Frank Borzage is best known for films such as 7th Heaven (1927) and Man's Castle (1933).

The Stampede (Silent, BW, 1921): "Tex" Henderson can ride a horse and throw a lasso as good as any man. But the one thing she can't catch is the heart of Robert Wagner, who rejects her for being a tomboy. When the Gold Rush hits, Tex heads out to California to stake her claim, realizing that striking it rich may be just what it takes to get her man. Director and co-star Francis Ford was the older brother of Western legend John Ford.

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