When a final tally is made, it may turn out that Andre De Toth directed as many superior Randolph Scott westerns as the more celebrated Budd Boetticher. In De Toth's
Carson City, Scott is cast as a railroad construction engineer known only as Silent Jeff. His plans to build a railroad line between Nevada's Carson City and Virginia City are met with hostility by the locals, who feel that where there are trains, there are bandits. Sure enough, a criminal gang headed by Big Jack Davis (
Raymond Massey) and Jim Squires (James Millican) begins drawing up plans to plunder Carson City. When Silent Jeff vows to get rid of the town's criminal element, the villains frame him on a murder charge. The climax is one of the best of its kind, with Silent Jeff forced to contend with both a landslide and a big-scale gold bullion heist. Lucille Norman plays the heroine, whose attentions are torn between Silent Jeff and second lead Richard Webb (later TV' s Captain Midnight).
