In the Republic «Red Ryder» western The Great Stagecoach Robbery (1945), he scores several solid laughs
as an
outlaw leader
posing as a schoolteacher, assuring an anxious mother that he'll learn to love her children, then muttering «If they live that long...» Don Costello died suddenly at the age of 44; his last appearance was in the Alan Ladd thriller The Blue Dahlia (1946).