Support Your Local Gunfighter *** (1971, James Garner, Suzanne Pleshette, Joan Blondell, Jack Elam, Chuck Connors, Harry Morgan, John Dehner, Henry Jones, Marie Windsor) – Classic Movie Review 6535

‘The story of a man who took the law into his own finger!’ James Garner’s smooth rogue conman hero Latigo Smith is mistaken for a well-known hired gunman when he stops off at a small Western mining town, controlled by rival companies. Latigo Smith’s plan is to impersonate the gunfighter so he can pay his debts and flee before the real gunslinger arrives.

Then each company tries to hire him to drive the other company out of town, in director Burt Kennedy’s amiable 1971 cowboy comedy follow-up to his Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969). It feels like a sequel, yet it is a follow-up with lots of the same actors, and the same sense of humour, but different characters.

Jack Elam dominates the deliciously entertaining supporting cast as a weird sidekick, Jug May, whom Garner’s Latigo Smith cons the town into believing is an infamous killer, Swifty Morgan. Suzanne Pleshette is a delight as Patience ‘Sidewinder’ Barton. Support Your Local Sheriff! character actors Harry Morgan, Henry Jones, Kathleen Freeman, Willis Bouchey, Gene Evans, Dick Haynes and Walter Burke all reappear.

The screenplay derives from an unproduced project of John Wayne’s writing buddy James Edward Grant, specialist in man-sized jokes.

Also in the cast are Joan Blondell, Chuck Connors, John Dehner, Dub Taylor, Marie Windsor, Terry Wilson, John Wheeler, Grady Sutton, Dick Curtis, Ellen Corby, Virginia Capers, Herb Vigran, Ben Cooper, Pedro Gonzales-Gonzales, Mike Wagner, Roy Glenn, and Jerry Gatlin.

This Cherokee Production from Garner’s own company is shot by Harry Stradling Jr, produced by Burt Kennedy and Bill Finnegan, scored by Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson, and designed by Phil Barber.

Harry Stradling Jr,  Little Big Man (1970) and The Way We Were (1973) cinematographer, died on 17 October 2017, aged 92.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6535

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