ID this dreadful old B&W western with the jaw-dropping flub. (Roy Rogers, maybe?)

Cafe Society
1

I was once semi-watching a sad old black & white western on TV at 3:00 a.m about 6 months ago when I think I saw the damnedest movie flub ever. I remember absolutely nothing of the plot except for the flub scene which went something like this.

There are three characters in a cellar (or mine, or similar enclosed setting). Two of them are oldish men, neither of whom are the leading man, IIRC; the third is a youngish, pretty woman. To leave the cellar they must climb a set of stairs (or ladder), which they do as a group. A scene or two later they are shown popping up at the top of the stairs (or ladder) – except now there are only the two men. *The woman is gone! *

One of them says something like, “Hey what happened to so-and-so [the girl]?”

The other responds nonchalantly with something like, “Don’t know. But that’s okay. We don’t need her.” They then proceed with the rest of the action like nothing happened – as if women simply disappear into thin air while climbing stairs all the time!

I swear this was not some crazy western with a magic/fantasy/mind-reading twist. It was one of those cheap, horrible, rootin’-tootin’, stagecoach-robbin’, lassoing’-the-bad-guys type westerns that the studios cranked out by the bucketful in the '30s and '40s, usually starring Roy Rogers et al. My guess is that the actress got canned or injured or walked off the set in the middle of shooting and they did not want to incur the expense of reshooting her earlier scenes, so they just left them in and rewrote the script around it.

I would love to know that I was not imagining this scene. Can anyone ID this movie and confirm my memory?

2

Here’s a post-holiday bump, pardner.

3

Well I did some more poking around IMDB.com to see if I could find the film on my own. I did not locate it yet, but I did find one with a goof that certainly comes close, Badman’s Territory (1946). Here’s what the IMDB’s entry says about the film:

“Ben Johnson appears uncredited as a member of Marshal Hampton’s posse. He even has a line or two of dialogue. He and the marshal and another deputy dismount and enter a building on location. In the next shot, the studio interior, Hampton and the deputy come through the door, but not Ben, he has disappeared and is seen no more.”

All I can say is, Wow!