Wyoming was a Bill Elliott film that all of Republic's stars had to do, one with Vera Hruba Ralston who was Mrs. Herbert J. Yates. The only one I think that missed that co-star was Roy Rogers. This was a big budget item for 1947 the kind of film that Yates normally reserved for his biggest contract star, John Wayne who did a few films with Vera.
The plot goes over the same ground that MGM's Tracy/Hepburn classic Sea Of Grass did and also the John Wayne film McLintock although that one in a comic vein. Elliott, his wife Vera, and her aunt from the old country Maria Ouspenskaya are going west and Gabby Hayes takes them in. He and Elliott hit it off so well that Elliott becomes his partner in a ranch that eventually becomes the local Ponderosa. Ralston dies in childbirth giving birth to a daughter also played by Vera Hruba Ralston. She keeps the accent because Elliott sends her to school in Europe with Ouspenskaya as a chaperon.
When she returns there's a range feud brewing. Land that Elliott and other cattlemen have been using for grazing has been now claimed by homesteaders who are being organized and led by a bottom feeding shyster attorney in Albert Dekker.
When Ralston comes back she gets herself involved with Elliott's foreman John Carroll. But Carroll and Elliott don't see eye to eye on how to deal with the situation. Back in New Orleans Carroll was an attorney who was disbarred in Louisiana, but still has a reverence for the law. Elliott only knows the law of the six gun and Dekker is trying to push him into an all out war, especially with Wyoming about to become a state.
Wyoming is one of Bill Elliott's better westerns, it has a nice cast of familiar western names who know their way around a movie set corral. The plot is more complex than you usually find in a Republic B western. All in all a good introduction to cowboy hero Wild Bill Elliott.
