The Gunfight at Dodge City

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.

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').

We've seen it all before in so many Westerns, even to the cosy buggy ride out into the country for a bit of romancing. If the tagline was "All The Thundering Might Of The Most Famed Gunfight Of Them All!", then this was hyperbole even by Hollywood standards; when I sat down to watch it it I thought it might be a reworking of the OK Corral shootout, but it wasn't; the inevitable gunfight at the end was quite tame, and its outcome predictable. McCrea was in his latish fifties when the film was made, and it would have been a sad swansong for an usually-watchable actor; thank goodness he went onto make "Ride the High Country".

After a career that stretched back to the silent era that included work with such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens, and Preston Sturges, Joel McCrae turned almost exclusively to the western genre in the mid-1940's. Near the end of McCrae's prodigious output of modestly budgeted westerns, he played real life lawman, journalist, and gambler, Bat Masterson, in "The Gunfight at Dodge City." While the story treads familiar territory, McCrae and the movie will likely please most fans of the star in particular and horse-operas in general. As Masterson, a weathered Joel McCrae becomes the town sheriff after his brother, the former sheriff, is killed. Nothing new here; a kindly town doctor played by John McIntire; a lovely widowed saloon keeper, Nancy Gates; a preacher and his prim uptight daughter, James Westerfield and Julie Adams; a friendly townsman and his mentally-challenged brother, Walter Coy and Wright King; and the requisite bad guys, Richard Anderson and Don Haggerty. Besides McCrae, only John McIntire makes much of an impression among the supporting cast.

Director Joseph M. Newman mixes the cliched elements into an entertaining 82 minutes; a few gunfights, a daring rescue, a touch of romance, an attempted rape, fistfights, and the requisite standby, a showdown on the dusty main street of an old western town. "The Gunfight at Dodge City" is no classic of the genre, but rather a routine western that offers all the elements for an afternoon's entertainment, plus the opportunity to watch an iconic western star, Joel McCrae, at work doing what he loved and did exceptionally well.

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.