Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)

Director:

Burt Kennedy

Writer:

James Edward Grant (written by)

Release Date:

3 June 1971 (West Germany)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance | Western

Tagline:

The story of a man who took the law into his own finger!

Plot:

A con artist arrives in a mining town controlled by two competing companies. Both companies think he's a famous gunfighter and try to hire him to drive the other out of town.

Plot Keywords:

Gunfighter | Mining Town | Con | Con Artist | Mistaken Identity

Cast

James Garner	...	Latigo
Suzanne Pleshette	...	Patience
Jack Elam	...	Jug May
Harry Morgan	...	Taylor
Joan Blondell	...	Jenny
Marie Windsor	...	Goldie
John Dehner	...	Colonel Ames
Henry Jones	...	Ez
Dub Taylor	...	Doc Schultz
Kathleen Freeman	...	Mrs. Perkins
Dick Curtis	...	Bud Barton
Willis Bouchey	...	McLaglen
Walter Burke	...	Morris
Gene Evans	...	Butcher
Grady Sutton	...	Storekeeper

Also Known As:

Latigo (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG | Singapore:PG | UK:U | West Germany:16 (nf) | Finland:K-12 | Sweden:11 | USA:G (certificate #22841)

Filming Locations:

Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway, Durango, Colorado, USA

Company:

Cherokee-Brigade Productions

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Modern train trestle: in the opening credit sequence, we see an old-time steam locomotive and train crossing a railroad bridge. The under-structure of the bridge is obviously of modern construction, using modern steel beams and girders. In the Old West, when the story takes place, the railroad trestle would have been constructed entirely out of heavy timbers.

Quotes:

Doc Schultz: [Latigo has come to the doctor for medical consultation] What's your problem?
Latigo: Uh, Doc... Promise you won't tell anybody, huh?
Doc Schultz: On my hypocritic oath!

Movie Connections:

Follows Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969)

"Fire In The Hole"

Support Your Local Gunfighter is not a sequel to Support Your Local Sheriff. Nor is it a film taking a look at how the other half lives in the wild west of Hollywood. But what it is is a rollicking good comedy with a cast of some of the best players around.

Burt Kennedy brought over a whole flock of people from the other 'Support' film starting with James Garner and Jack Elam. Garner had patented playing cynical con men starting with Maverick on television. He's certainly showed he's got the acting chops to play serious parts. But he keeps getting cast as these conman comics because he's so darn good at it.

As for Jack Elam, he became an almost permanent fixture in Burt Kennedy projects as a result of Support Your Local Sheriff. Talk about making lemonade out of a lemon. Elam first used his blind eye to great effect playing psychotic killers when he first broke into acting. But in the sixties he began using that same look for comedy and never really played serious after becoming a Burt Kennedy regular.

Garner and Elam are a pair of amiable drifters who wind up in a mining town called Purgatory. There's a pair of rival mine owners, Harry Morgan and John Dehner who are tunneling under the town to reach the mother lode vein of gold that will make one of them fabulously wealthy. Dehner's purportedly sent for a notorious gunman and Morgan and his partners think it could be Garner. It isn't, but Garner and Elam play it for all it's worth.

Suzanne Pleshette steps into the Calamity Jane wannabe part that Joan Hackett did in Support Your Local Sheriff and Pleshette does it most effectively. Joan Blondell and Marie Windsor are a pair of bordello madams each courted by Garner at one time. Hell hath no fury like a jilted madam. You've got to see Garner with that line about a spur and a dying cowhand's last wish.

Even Chuck Connors as the real gunfighter playing it absolutely straight comes in for some good laughs. But I do like Harry Morgan courting Dehner's old maid sister Ellen Corby, love isn't just for the young, the two show love isn't just for the young.

The ending; to bizarre for words, worthy of Mel Brooks. You have to see Support Your Local Gunfighter to believe it.