Big Stakes [1992]: Directed by Clifford S. Elfelt starring J.B. Warner, Elinor Fair, Ses Bates, Willie May Carson, H.S. Karr, and Robert Grey. Screen play adapted from Earl Wayland Bowmans American Magazine Story "High Stakes" by Frank Howard Clark

This western comedy is a true rarity from the silent era until its recent video releases rescued it from oblivion. Big Stakes is one of a series of Western's directed by Elfelt (he is best known for directing 50,000 Dollar Reward in 1924 starring Ken Maynard in his first lead role.) In Big Stakes, J.B. Warner stars as a Texas gentleman who falls for a Mexican girl and tries to win her from a dashing rival the Mexican General, in a contest involving Mexican jumping beans. When his new love rejects him, he returns home just in time to save his blonde hometown girl from a Ku Klux Klan leader who questions her "purity."

The film's somewhat liberal attitude toward race is in stark contrast to D.W. Griffiths A Birth of a Nation, 1920, and the exciting climax could have been intended as a subtle criticism of Griffith's landmark epic. This movie is filled with action, romance, humor, and many other staples of early Western's; i.e. bar fights, horse chases, and shoot outs.

Clifford S. Elfelt: Graduate of Notre Dame University, former operator of a movie exchange, a director with Universal from 1916, and an associate of Sydney Chaplin, Clifford S. Elfelt turned to the field of B-Westerns in the 1920s, producing and directing a brief series starring J.B. Warner. For poverty row mogul J. Charles Davis, Elfelt later created Ken Maynard's first Western vehicles, a series that rather incongruously also featured a bevy of former Follies girls. Unfortunately, Elfelt went bankrupt producing this obscure series and he left films altogether in 1926. ~ Hans J. Wollstein

Elinor Fair: Also appeared in Kismet, 1920 directed by Louis Gasnier and Yankee Clipper, 1927 directed by Rupert Julian.

J.B. Warner: Also starred in Behind Two Guns by Robert N. Bradbury