The Silver Whip

Jess Harker is a young man. Nothing is opening up for him in his home town. He decides to leave. The armed guard on the stagecoach steps in. The man is called Race Crim. He talks his boss round. Jess gets the driver’s job. Then a gold shipment is robbed. The town rises over it. A crowd wants to set its own justice. The sheriff wants the law to run. Jess is caught between the two, one man teaching him one thing and the other something else entirely. The film is interested in what a lynch mob leaves behind. The story comes from a novel by Jack Schaefer, with a screenplay by Jesse L. Lasky Jr. It was Robert Wagner’s first leading role. Dale Robertson and Rory Calhoun also appear in the seventy three minute film, an American production Harmon Jones finished in 1953.