The Gunfighter **** (1950, Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell, Richard Jaeckel, Skip Homeier, B G Norman, Karl Malden, Jean Parker, Verna Felton, Alan Hale Jr, Ellen Corby, Mae Marsh) – Classic Movie Review 2594

‘His only friend was his gun… His only refuge – a woman’s heart!’ Director Henry King’s superior 1950 Western stars Gregory Peck, who rivets the attention cast against type as a worn-out reformed gunfighter called Jimmy Ringo who won’t be allowed to hang up his weapons as young guns like local gunslinger Eddie (Richard Jaeckel) keep goading him back into action.

Jimmy Ringo comes to town to discuss a reconciliation with his estranged sweetheart Peggy Walsh (Helen Westcott) and their young son Jimmie (B G Norman), whom he has never seen. But local lawman Marshal Mark Strett (the excellent Millard Mitchell) urges him to move on. Then enter three vengeful cowboys hot on Ringo’s trail and a young punk (Skip Homeier) who fancies himself as the fastest gun in the West.

There is nothing particularly new in screen-writer William Bowers’s and William Sellers’s screenplay, but it all in how it’s done, and The Gunfighter is this kind of story’s finest flourishing, The film’s tragic tone, the incisive acting and acute direction combine to put it head and shoulders above most Westerns.

Bowers and André De Toth were Oscar nominated for Best Motion Picture Story, and Arthur Miller’s atmospheric black and white cinematography is another strong asset to the film, along with Alfred Newman’s score.

It didn’t do as well as expected and at the time matinée idol Peck’s wearing an authentic period moustache was thought to have harmed the film’s box-office appeal. After the film did not do well at the box office,  head of production at Fox, Spyros P Skouras told Peck: ‘That moustache cost us millions.’

Also in the cast are Karl Malden, Jean Parker, Verna Felton, Alan Hale Jr, Ellen Corby and Mae Marsh.

The story is based on the real John Ringo, who was a ruthless murderer and survivor of the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral.

The original story was written with John Wayne in mind, who loved it and offered writer Bowers $10,000 for it but he thought it was worth more. Wayne said: ‘Well, you wrote it for me. Don’t you have any artistic integrity?’

The Western street in the film is the same one used in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2594

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