Support Your Local Gunfighter
| Support Your Local Gunfighter | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Burt Kennedy |
| Written by | James Edward Grant and, uncredited, Burt Kennedy[1] |
| Produced by | Bill Finnegan Burt Kennedy |
| Starring | James Garner Suzanne Pleshette Harry Morgan Jack Elam John Dehner Marie Windsor Joan Blondell Kathleen Freeman Ellen Corby |
| Cinematography | Harry Stradling Jr. |
| Edited by | William B. Gulick |
| Music by | Jack Elliot Allyn Ferguson |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
|
Running time | 91 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Support Your Local Gunfighter is a 1971 comic western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring James Garner. It was written by James Edward Grant. The film shares many cast and crew members and plot elements with the earlier Support Your Local Sheriff! but is not a sequel. It actually parodies Yojimbo and its remake A Fistful of Dollars, using the basic storyline of a stranger who wanders into a feuding town and pretends to work as an enforcer for both sides.
Garner later wrote the film was "not as good as Support Your Local Sheriff".[2]
Plot
Latigo Smith (Garner), a gambler and confidence man, is traveling by train in frontier-era Colorado with the rich and powerful Goldie (Marie Windsor). Goldie wants desperately to marry him, a fate he wants no part of. He sneaks off the train at Purgatory, a small mining town.
He discovers that two mining companies, run by bitter rivals Taylor Barton (Harry Morgan) and Colonel Ames (John Dehner), are vying to find a "mother lode" of gold buried somewhere nearby. Dynamite blasts periodically rock the town to its foundations.
Latigo consults the town doctor (Dub Taylor) about an embarrassing problem that is not immediately revealed, but turns out to be a Goldie-related tattoo. Latigo's great weakness is a periodically uncontrollable urge to bet on roulette; he soon loses all of his money playing his "lucky" number, 23. Penniless, he starts romancing local saloonkeeper Miss Jenny (Joan Blondell). Being mistaken for infamous gunslinger "Swifty" Morgan gives Latigo an idea. He talks amiable ne'er-do-well Jug May (Jack Elam) into impersonating Swifty. Latigo attracts the attention of Patience Barton (Suzanne Pleshette), the hot-tempered daughter of Taylor, who desperately wants to escape her frontier existence, attend "Miss Hunter's College on the Hudson River, New York, for Young Ladies of Good Families", and live a life of refinement in New York City. When Latigo and Jug side with the Bartons in a dispute, Ames sends a telegram to the real Swifty Morgan (Chuck Connors) informing him of their deception.
Swifty arrives in town and immediately challenges the hapless Jug to a gunfight, but at the appointed time and place Latigo is there in his place, sitting atop a donkey loaded with crates of dynamite. Swifty calls Latigo's bluff, but he is startled by a warning about the next explosion and accidentally shoots himself. The blast also panics the donkey, which charges into the a saloon/whorehouse, blowing up the building. The second blast uncovers the mother lode and removes Latigo's troublesome tattoo, leaving him uninjured.
Latigo finally wins big at roulette after betting $10,000 on 23. Jug, talking to the camera from the back of a moving train taking Latigo and Patience to Denver to get married, reveals that Patience never did go to Miss Hunter's College, but seven of her daughters did. As for himself, Jug says he went on to become a big star in Italian westerns.
Cast
- James Garner† as Latigo Smith
- Suzanne Pleshette as Patience Barton
- Harry Morgan† as Taylor Barton
- Jack Elam† as Jug May
- John Dehner as Col. Ames
- Marie Windsor as Goldie
- Dick Curtis as Bud Barton
- Dub Taylor as Doc Shultz
- Joan Blondell as Jenny
- Ellen Corby as Abigail Ames
- Kathleen Freeman† as Mrs. Martha Perkins
- Virginia Capers as Effie
- Henry Jones† as Ez
- Ben Cooper as Colorado
- Grady Sutton as Storekeeper
- Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez as Ortiz
- Chuck Connors as "Swifty" Morgan (uncredited)
(Actors marked with a '†' symbol also appeared in Support Your Local Sheriff!)
See also
References
- ^ http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/24064/Support-Your-Local-Gunfighter/articles.html
- ^ Garner, James; Winokur, Jon (2011). The Garner Files: A Memoir. Simon & Schuster. p. 258.