The Slowest Gun in the West

"The Slowest Gun in the West" was a pilot for a TV series that wasn't picked up by the networks. After seeing it, I could easily see why...it was terrible.

The town of Primrose is filled with evil gunmen and a nasty boss (Bruce Cabot). However, the townsfolk want the place to be a nice place to live and keep hiring sheriff after sheriff--and they get killed one after another. One day, an abject coward, The Silver Dollar Kid (Phil Silvers) comes into town and the townsfolk get an idea--hire this annoying guy because he's such a coward that the gunmen won't kill him because they don't want to be known as the guy who murdered a totally yellow guy(?). And, using lots of anachronistic and annoying ways, the new sheriff brings peace to the land.

The show has three huge problems. The biggest is the ever-present and annoying laugh track. The other is that while this idea MIGHT have worked, it certainly wasn't enough to support a series. Additionally, Silvers and his shtick was 100% annoying and became grating as the show progressed. Overall, a rather dopey idea that just didn't work.

Phil Silvers cleans up a western town in this ultimate fish-out-of-water story.

Since it's about an hour long (and black and white) it's hard to talk about without dropping spoilers, so this review will mention some of its better aspects.

Is it funny? Most of it is simply light. It does have some out-loud laughs but once the delightful premise is established it drags a few minutes before the great Jack Benny shows up. An hour is about the extent this premise will stretch.

Does Jack Benny have a worthwhile part? Yes, but don't expect him until after it's half to two-thirds over.

Who else is in it? Parley Baer, Bruce Cabot, Jack Albertson. Two noteworthy rising western stars have small but pivotal roles: Jack Elam and Lee van Cleef. Later in the decade Elam would appear in a funnier western spoof. "Support Your Local Sheriff."

I have never liked canned laughter and it certainly did not help here. Yes, I do like "Gilligan's Island".

Like viewing the burlesque skits of old Vaudeville, one can intellectually understand that something should be funny, once was, but today it will just miss the mark. I wanted to like this as so many well rounded performers took part in the effort. After viewing this made for TV film I remember seeing it when it originally aired, I did not then find it funny, yet I appreciate why it should elicit a smile. I watched because I recall, as a child, some of the humour of the "Phil Silvers Show" - that was the 1950's, it is now 2008 and the bloom is off the rose.

Finding this by accident on YouTube, I was excited because I vaguely remembered watching it on TV, 'way too many years ago.

I had not remembered it as a Phil Silvers special, for some reason. But watching it and him, I was again reminded what a really fine actor he was.

Yes, he generally played the similar kind of bluff con man, but watch his face. Watch his body. He was incredibly expressive, so very much in control.

Jack Benny also very much played his well-known character, but, again, watch him, closely. He really could be a good actor. And was in this funny story.

Then we were given some of the very best villains ever filmed, including Bob Wilke and Lee Van Cleef and Jack Elam. And they and all the others were so excellent in their portrayals, I can't help wondering why this little gem of a TV movie is not better known and presented more often.

It has one flaw: That intrusive and annoying laugh track. There is absolutely no good reason for such interference.

But I highly recommend "The Slowest Gun in the West" for a less-than-an-hour's entertainment

This was an amusing comedy which I believe was shown the during the summer of 1960. The show was about how Phil Silvers was cleaning up a crime ridden town in the old west, sometimes using methods that were...shall we say a little anachronistic. In one sequence he ruins a young gunslinger by convincing him that his dependence on his two six-shooters was based on an unhappy childhood deprived of his toys. You hear him shooting it out, and as he stumbles out of the building, he looks at his two guns and mutters (in happy tears), "My Teddy Bears!" The bad guys hire Jack Benny to bring down the cowardly Silvers, only to hire his criminal opposite number. Benny and Silvers ended the show in the most preposterous show-down in western history. To prove their superiority over the other they have to be more cowardly - so each yells "You draw first!" to the other. We watch them in place with the town growing up around them. Only at the tail end of the show do we see who won the show-down.