Stuart N. Lake Movies

Filmed around the same time as Gunfight at the OK Corral, Wichita is a more modest--and to some, more entertaining--slant on the Wyatt Earp legend. Joel McCrea does his usual smooth, underplayed job as Earp, who aims to bring law and order to the wide-open cow town of Wichita. His least popular move is to take away the guns of everyone in town, no matter how important. Only when town banker McCoy (Walter Coy) is hit with a personal tragedy does Earp's no-guns edict begin to make sense. Linking the episodic storyline is an offscreen ballad, sung High Noon style by Tex Ritter. Interestingly, Joel McCrea would later star in the 1959 TV western Wichita Town--though not, of course, as Wyatt Earp (Hugh O'Brien was busy with that character on another network!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lin McAdam (James Stewart) and his friend High-Spade (Millard Mitchell) arrive in Dodge City for a shooting contest, in which the prize is a perfectly manufactured Winchester repeating rifle, referred to as "One of a Thousand" -- a gun so fine that Winchester won't sell it. Lin runs across Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally) in a saloon and the two would kill each other right there but for the fact that town marshal Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) has everyone's guns. Lin wins the rifle in an extraordinary marksmanship match-up with Brown, but the latter steals the prize from him and sets out across the desert. Thus begins a battle of wits and nerves, and a pursuit to the death. The roots and raw psychological dimensions of that chase are only exposed gradually, across a story arc that includes references to Custer's Last Stand, run-ins with marauding Indians, a heroic stand with a a shady but well-intentioned grifter (Charles Drake), and a meeting with murderous sociopath named Waco Johnny Dean (Dan Duryea), plus a romantic encounter with a young, golden-hearted frontier woman (Shelley Winters). All of these story lines eventually get drawn together neatly and gracefully by director Anthony Mann, who balances the violence of the events with a lyrical, almost poetic visual language. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The town of Vinegaroon, TX, is the home to Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan), who calls himself "The Only Law West of the Pecos." Bean keeps a saloon, where he also conducts trials, using his office to get fat on fines and the seizure of property, and hanging most of those who get in his way, sometimes more than one a day. Cole Hardin (Gary Cooper) is a saddle-tramp brought in on a charge of stealing a horse belonging to Bean's chief stooge, Chickenfoot (Paul Hurst). Hardin's conviction by a jury made up of Bean's hangers-on (with the undertaker, played with low-key comic zeal by Charles Halton, waiting eagerly for the verdict and the hanging) seems certain, despite his contention that he bought the horse from another man, until Hardin recognizes the judge's obsession with the English actress Lily Langtry. Hardin feigns having seen, met, and known Miss Langtry intimately, and he cons the judge into delaying the death sentence until Hardin can send for a lock of the actress' hair that he supposedly has in El Paso -- that's long enough for the real horse thief (Tom Tyler) to show up and get killed.

By the time the dust settles, the judge, for all of his warped sense of justice and corrupt nature, finds himself genuinely liking Hardin as something of a kindred spirit, as bold and daring as he was in his youth, and feeling something like friendship for him. But Bean also tries to shoot Hardin when he decides to cast his lot with the homesteaders, led by Jane-Ellen Mathews (Doris Davenport) and her father, Caliphet (Fred Stone), who have been fighting for survival against Bean and his cattle-rancher allies every step of the way. Hardin tries to appeal to the better nature within the judge, and also saves him from an attempted lynching, but when that fails, and a corn crop is burned and Mr. Mathews killed, he sees no choice but to take action. He gets an arrest warrant sworn out and is deputized by the county sheriff. Taking Bean in his saloon or anywhere in his town (renamed Langtry by the judge, in honor of the actress) is impossible, but then it's announced that Lily Langtry will be appearing in Texas, a long day's ride away from Bean's stronghold. The judge, dressed in his full Civil War regalia and with his men in tow, rides to see the performance while Hardin gets ready to try and arrest him. The kind of climactic shoot-out that follows has been done to death in the decades since, but it was something new and revelatory in a Western in 1940, and still plays beautifully on a dramatic level, capturing in full the complexity of the relationship between these two antagonists. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The third of Paramount's "deluxe" westerns of the 1930s (following The Texas Rangers and The Plainsman) was Wells Fargo, filmed on a Cecil B. DeMille scale by producer-director Frank Lloyd. In his first western appearance, Joel McCrea plays Ramsey McCay, troubleshooter for the newly formed partnership of Henry Wells (Henry O'Neill) and William Fargo (Jack Clark). Dedicated to maintaining a safe and speedy overland mail and freight service to the West, Wells-Fargo is at the forefront of several important historical events, including the California Gold Rush, the formation of the Pony Express and the Civil War. Hero McCay is briefly separated from his wife Justine (played by McCrea's real-life spouse Frances Dee) during the last-named conflict, but the two are reunited late in life as Wells-Fargo celebrates its 20th year of service. Constructed in a rather pedantic "tableau" fashion (a frequent shortcoming in Frank Lloyd's films), Wells Fargo nevertheless contains several thrill-packed highlights, most of which would do service as stock footage in such later Paramount westerns as Geronimo. Originally released at 115 minutes, Wells Fargo was radically shortened in subsequent re-issues, almost completely eliminating the semi-villainous character played by fourth-billed Lloyd Nolan (if asked, audiences would probably have preferred to see far less of comedy-relief Bob "Bazooka" Burns). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide