AllMovie

A former cowboy and rodeo rider, dark-haired Bob Custer signed with independent producer Jesse J. Goldburg in 1924 to star in a series of low-budget Texas Ranger films. Custer's impressive name (an invention of Goldburg's) and the fact that he looked good on a horse gained the new cowboy hero an instant following, at least in smaller venues. Billing himself Raymond Glenn, Custer later attempted to escape B-Westerns, with such melodramas as Temptations of a Shop Girl and Ladies at Ease (both 1927), but away from the sagebrush, his lack of any real acting skills was painfully obvious. Custer became his own producer in the waning days of the silent era, releasing through Film-Booking-Office, but a reported inability to remember written lines sealed his fate at the coming of sound. Despite this seemingly fatal handicap, Custer continued to star for such low-rent companies as Big Four Productions and Reliable Pictures, but he was as wooden as a cigar-store Indian and wisely retired in 1937. Not soon enough, however, for the moviegoing audience to be spared Santa Fe Rides (1937), an especially atrocious Western affair that came complete with badly dubbed musical numbers. The film was so bad it proved Custer's swan song; retired, he later became a building inspector in the coastal cities of El Segundo and Redondo Beach, CA. The former silent screen star suffered a fatal heart attack while out walking his dog.