Beyond the Sacramento

"Wild" Bill Hickok gets wind that two slick swindlers have set up shop again in a frontier town. One runs the saloon and smiles at everyone, the other edits the local newspaper and uses his ink to steer public opinion. Bill knows their tricks from before, and he decides to expose them without waiting for the law. He slips into the editor's office at night and alters the front page to accuse the editor of being a fugitive criminal. When townspeople see the headline the next morning, tensions boil over and the crooked operators face a fast collapse of their influence. He risks his reputation to unmask them, aware the town could react violently when public trust collapses, threatening livelihoods.

Lambert Hillyer directed the 1940 Western from a story by Luci Ward, with Bill Elliott as Wild Bill Hickok. Evelyn Keyes, Dub Taylor, John Dilson and Bradley Page round out the principal cast, released to fill double bills for audiences.

No reliable box office or gross figures are readily available for this title, which largely survives through archive listings and reference guides rather than through widespread re-release or syndication, leaving commercial performance unclear, and records remain sparse to researchers today.

Beyond the Sacramento isn't widely remembered today, yet it captures familiar Western ingredients: saloons, corrupt town bosses, and a moral-minded gunslinger. Fans of vintage B-Westerns will spot period production values, crisp supporting comic relief from Dub Taylor, and straightforward moral storytelling typical of the era for Saturday matinees and reissues.

The picture leans on themes of corruption, community rumor, and the power of the press, with a straightforward moral center. Performances are serviceable, especially Elliott's Western persona, and the film moves at a brisk, economical pace common to 1940s genre entries, favoring plot momentum over psychological depth with modest ambitions.