This is a highly sanitized, prettified and fictionalized version of Wyatt
Earp's time in Wichita in 1874. This was a few years before the O.K. Corral
shootout. In the same year as this film was produced, the TV series The Life
and Legend of Wyatt Earp starring Hugh O'Brien began and that may have influenced
how clean they make everything in this one from the town to Earp. Jacque
Tourneur directs and Joel McCrea is Earp. McCrea is an interesting story.
He was very successful early on in his career with a series of comedies -
Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story and The More the Merrier - and a
few good films opposite Barbara Stanwyck along with the classic Hitchcock
film Foreign Correspondent. Boyishly handsome and charming, he was great
in these contemporary films. Then beginning in 1946 he did practically nothing
but Westerns for the next 30 years. The same thing was happening to a lesser
degree with Jimmy Stewart and Randolph Scott in the 1950s when Westerns were
so popular but Stewart had Anthony Mann directing him in many of them and
Scott had Budd Boetticher doing the same. Those films with those directors
are terrific. McCrea had a series of directors and most of his Westerns are
not as highly regarded today. Good but not really memorable Westerns. This
falls into that category with its short running time of 81 minutes.
Earp is drifting about making his living as a buffalo hunter but wanting
to settle down as a businessman in the booming town of Wichita. The railroad
had just opened up and it was about to become the end point of cattle drives.
He is depositing his money in the bank when three robbers try and take it
- he shoots them all down and the town elders ask him to be sheriff. He declines.
Not my kind of work. When the cattle men shoot up the town in a drunken celebration
and kill a young boy, he changes his mind. He becomes friends with a young
innocent journalist - by the name of Bat Masterson. Who would get his own
TV show in three years. When he confronts the cattlemen and throws a bunch
of them in jail - and institutes a No Gun Policy - the cattlemen want to
kill him and the Town Elders want to fire him. Among the cattlemen are Lloyd
Bridges and Jack Elam. The woman he falls for is played by Vera Miles and
her mother by Mae Clark - the girl who got the grapefruit pushed in her face
by Cagney. Peter Graves turns up as one of Earp's brothers.
Now the truth is a bit different. Earp came to Wichita with his wife because
his brother James was running a brothel. His wife joined the enterprise.
Wyatt Earp was likely the bouncer. He did join the law enforcement
but as a deputy and it was short lived as he punched out an ex-Marshall and
got sacked. He and his wife then moved on to Dodge. As to Bat Masterson,
they did know each other and Bat had this to say about Earp "I have known
him since the early '70s and have always found him a quiet, unassuming man,
not given to brag or bluster, but at all times and under all circumstances
a loyal friend and an equally dangerous enemy.” But in 1874 Masterson was
no innocent journalist - he took up that trade ten years later but not seriously
till he moved to NYC in 1902 where he lived till his death in 1921. Also,
by 1874 he had participated in the Siege of Adobe Walls in which he and a
few others held off hundreds of Native Americans for five days.
Not that any of this matters to the movie -I just find it interesting. The
film is just a bit too clean cut for its own good. Even the many prostitutes
look like they went to charm school and are all knock-outs. I doubt that
it was that way! As much as I love McCrea in all things, he is too old at
50 to be playing this role of what would be a young Wyatt Earp and he looks
much older than his romantic interest. Westerns back in the 1950s of course
are almost always about myth-making - making characters larger than life
and this certainly does that. That was to change to some degree in the 60s
when directors like Peckinpah came along. And he has a tiny role here as
a bank teller.
