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An annotated bibliography of books and articles on Western films has been constructed because it is important to future researchers to know what materials have already been collected and what specific studies have already been done. Westerns are important in the history of American popular culture. They contain seven popular forms of the distant past: Indian captivity narratives, military and frontier travel narratives, historical romances, stage melodramas, dime novels, and wild west shows. In the twentieth century Westerns contributed significantly to the development of American films and to the American film industry. Each reference is located within one of eleven categories: 1. Selected reference sources. 2. Western film criticism of historical interest published prior to 1950. 3. Specific Western films. 4. Western film performers. 5. Makers of Western films. 6. Western film history. 7. Theories of Western films. 8. The Western film audience. 9. Comparative studies of American Western films with the Western films of other countries and Westerns as they appear in other media. 10. Westerns as they are taught in the classroom. 11. Periodicals which regularly publish articles on Western films. The annotation for each entry in the bibliography includes a description of the writer's method and thesis, the naming of films, performers or filmmakers described in detail in the book or article and, whenever appropriate, an evaluation of the quality of the book or article. Cross references between categories in the bibliography and a subject index and author index are included.