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The film is developed in Wichita where was Wyatt Earp(Joel McCrea) as one of the many lawman hired to keep the peace.Wyatt Earp was a gunman and sometime peace officer whose legendary reputation as a paragon of law and order was largely manufactured by himself and his biographer Stuart Lake.Undoubtedly he was also a man of cool courage and gunfighting skill.After working as a freighter and buffalo hunter Earp served as a policeman in Wichita (in 1875-76) and then as assistant town marshal of Dodge city.Wichita was a major cattle town that started life as a trading post for the Indians who had a village nearby and later a white settlement developed around.The town was incorporated as a third class city in 1871,and the following year ,when the railroad reached the location,it becomes a booming railhead of the cattle drives from Texas up the Chisholm trail .Like other cattle towns(Abilene) the rowdy,free-spending cowboys attracted saloon keepers,gambling houses,brothels,dance houses and all types of frontier riff-raff,the city became notorious for its lawlessness and vice, serving the needs of Texas cowboys.Wichita was the leading cattle shipping center ,with 200.000 cattle and 2.000 cowboys flooding into the area at the height of the station.In the movie the cowboys(Robert J.Wilke,Jack Elam) amuse themselves shooting the air and is when Wyatt Earp intervenes to keep the order .He is helped by his brothers James(John Smith)and Morgan(Peter Graves)who was badly wounded in the explosive showdown known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral(26 October 1881).In the movie appear Bat Masterson(Keith Larsen)working as journalist.Bat was also a peace officer and gunfighter of legendary reputation as Earp and spent the last twenty years of his life as a popular sports writer on a New York newspaper,moving on to Dodge City ,he served as a police officer and became a comrade of Wyatt.The motion picture narrates well the events around Wichita.The casting is frankly magnificent such the main characters(McCrea,Vera Miles) as the excellent supporting actors(Edgar Buchanan,Lloyd Bridges,Wallace Ford).The film is well directed by Jacques Tourneur
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