Le shérif aux mains rouges

My vote has always been that of all the great stars identified as western heroes, none was more upright than Joel McCrea. In fact whenever he tried to vary that character, the results usually weren't that good. Even in comedy parts like his films with Preston Sturges, he's still an honorable man, albeit caught up in some lunacy.

McCrea never crossed the line into making himself look ridiculous like Dudley Doo-Right and The Gunfight at Dodge City is a case in point. Here he's playing Bat Masterson who has come into Dodge City after a killing in another town and buys an interest in the Lady Gay Saloon owned by widow Nancy Gates. Brother Ed Masterson, played by Harry Lauter is the town marshal and he's keeping company with preacher's daughter played by Julie Adams.

Brother Ed is shot in the back during a cowboy hurrahing of Dodge City and Bat steps in to take his place. He brings some law and order back to Dodge City and makes both friends and enemies in the process. And he's got both the women mentioned before interested in him.

Fate would have it, a friend from another town comes back in his life. He wants him to bust his brother, who's mentally retarded, out of custody. The brother has killed a man who was making fun of him. He owes this guy big time and he has a responsibility to his badge in Dodge City.

I won't say anything, but Joel McCrea never took the less honorable route in his cinematic career. And as for which woman he winds up with? See the film.

Also look for an unusual performance against type from Richard Anderson. Anderson usually plays nice guys and he's best known for being Lee Majors boss in the Six Million Dollar Man. He's a serpentine villain here and a good one.

I saw this when I was 12 years old when it was the second feature of a double bill. That's what McCrea westerns were relegated to at that time. But Joel McCrea was a real cowboy hero to this 12 year old.

Still is.

Absent from this film are Wyatt Earp, Masterson's close friend and colleague in Dodge City, and Masterson's dapper clothing, a lifelong trademark, two major flaws in the film. His avoidance of public office doesn't ring true, either. The plot itself takes considerable liberties with the truth. (The television series "Bat Masterson" was closer to the truth in spirit and sometimes in fact.)

However, McCrea's intelligent and introspective portrayal of Masterson is on the mark. The acting of him and the rest of the cast carry the film, which is saddled with uninspired direction.

Joel McCrea, one of my favorite actors ever, especially in Westerns, delivers yet another naturalistic, honest, completely unpretentious and honorable performance in THE GUNFIGHT AT DODGE CITY, playing the famous Bat Masterson, born in Quebec, Canada in 1853 and deceased in NY in 1921, in between doing plenty of different jobs, from sheriff and marshall involved in noteworthy shootouts - mainly in Dodge City - to professional hunter, gambler, journalist, US Army scout, among other occupations.

As Bat not out of, but into the hell of Dodge City, McCrea receives able assistance from John McIntire as the town doctor - very unlike Doc Holiday's relation with Wyatt Earp, no rasping cough for starters - and he dispatches in style duplicitous villain Rudabaugh, portrayed against type by Richard Anderson, better known for roles in TV productions.

Two females interested in McCrea: the extremely beautiful Julie Adams, and the not so conventionally pretty but kindhearted and loving Nancy Gates. Bat has his hands full but makes the right choice!

I do not know much about Director Joseph Newman. I liked his A THUNDER OF DRUMS more than THE GUNFIGHT but enjoyed it despite the poor copy and unremarkable cinematography by Carl Guthrie.

The screenplay by Daniel Ullman rates somewhat patchy. 7/10.

I enjoyed this. It provides everything one expects from a Western: good plot, revenge, love, conflict between law and personal conscience, plenty of gun-play, and mood. And a few excellent quotes. Try: "The distance between here and that street is the distance between a rabbit and a man." The beginning is refreshing too. Before the title and opening credits, a world-weary McCrea is telling a simple teenage boy who admires his prowess with a gun what it really is like. How scared one is, how little it has to do with heroics, and how awfully wretched one feels afterwards. In this film, the gunfights are fast, and mostly in the dark. That's probably more accurate than so many more overblown sequences in other films. The performances on everyone's part, even the baddies', are in many ways unexpectedly subtle. Take Regan, the bad Sheriff. Look at his strange, tormented eyes. None of it's overplayed. If it's raining outside, get out the popcorn and curl up with this.

The use of the singular in the title is misleading as there's a gunfight every few minutes as Joel McCrea as Bat Masterson cleans up Dodge City.

Richard Anderson is cast against type as a gunfighter in black and Timothy Carey very much to type as the ugliest of the heavies (while an uncredited Kasey Rogers - fleetingly seen early on as a saloon gal named Molly - is unrecognisable without the glasses she wore as Guy's cheating spouse under her former name of 'Laura Elliot' in 'Strangers on a Train').