After having threatened Matt Fallon, Jack Mahoney is on trial for Fallon's murder and the theft of a strong box. His friends Steve Reynolds and Smiley Burnette await the verdict. Mahoney's attorney, Gail Kingston, puts on a poor defense and Mahoney is jailed.
Doc Handy arrives with proof of ownership of the stolen box, but is killed before he can testify. Steve Reynolds (secretly The Durango Kid) tells of the discovery of hidden Santa Ana gold believed to be in the stolen strong box.
The Durango Kid gathers all interested parties in the courtroom and reveals the actual progression of events, thus exposing the real murderer.
Fred F. Sears as Narrator (voice only) (uncredited)
Bullet as Steve's horse (uncredited)
Raider as Durango's horse (uncredited)
Production and release
Since 1949 Columbia Pictures had been economizing on its series of Charles Starrett westerns. Every all-new production now alternated with a "cheater"—a lower-budget production that incorporated entire sequences from older Durango Kid features. In The Kid from Broken Gun, the new scenes take up only about half of the 55-minute running time. Scriptwriter Barry Shipman structured the film as a courtroom story, so the testimony from the witnesses could be related as flashbacks to the older scenes. The old footage is taken from The Fighting Frontiersman (1946) and West of Sonora (1948).
Charles Starrett retired after filming was completed, ending the longest string of starring films in motion-picture history. Starrett made 131 feature films between 1935 and 1952, exclusively for Columbia. The studio fell back on its usual practice whenever a series was discontinued: the character identification was dropped from the film credits and the promotional materials. Starrett received star billing, but The Durango Kid was no longer mentioned.
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