Tim McCoy was a real-life homesteader, a military colonel who served in both World Wars, and an expert in Native American sign language. He also had a lightning-fast draw. On 35mm film running at 24 frames per second, film editors later clocked McCoy’s draw at a quick six frames from the moment his hand blurred to the moment smoke left his gun barrel. During the Pre-Code era (roughly 1930 to mid-1934), Columbia pushed McCoy hard. He rolled out nearly three dozen pictures. In The Western Code (1932) he plays a Texas Ranger trying to stop an illegal inheritance scam. The siblings he protects are played by Nora Lane and Dwight Frye, the Man With the Thousand Watt Stare (see him as Renfield in Dracula 1931 and The Vampire Bat 1933). Alice Cooper did The Ballad of Dwight Frye (usually while wearing a straitjacket) in homage.
