By 1940, the folks over at Republic Pictures were mighty busy turning the former Leonard Slye into Roy Rogers, ace B-Western hero. Although not the genre superstar that he would become later in the decade -- especially after the studio lost Gene Autry to the war efforts -- Rogers was awarded quite a supporting cast in The Carson City Kid: Bob Steele, fresh from Lewis Milestone's Of Mice and Men (1939) and himself a veteran B-Western star; George "Gabby" Hayes, one of Hollywood's best comic sidekicks, who had just recently left Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy series over a salary dispute; and Noah Beery Jr., young and promising and with a stellar motion picture pedigree. Add the beautiful Pauline Moore and such stalwart Western film regulars as Hal Taliaferro and Yakima Canutt and you have what they used to call a "nervous A," a genre film good enough to play the top half of a double bill. Yet despite all this star quality, the best performance in The Carson City Kid is offered by a less-remembered old-timer, silent screen leading man Francis McDonald, who is quite poignant as a tired old outlaw.