Support Your Local Gunfighter is a 1971 comic western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring James Garner. It was written by James Edward Grant. The film shares many cast and crew members and plot elements with the earlier Support Your Local Sheriff! but is not a sequel. It actually parodies Yojimbo and its remake A Fistful of Dollars, using the basic storyline of a stranger who wanders into a feuding town and pretends to work as an enforcer for both sides.
Support Your Local Gunfighter | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Burt Kennedy |
Produced by | Bill Finnegan Burt Kennedy |
Written by | James Edward Grant and, uncredited, Burt Kennedy |
Starring | James Garner Suzanne Pleshette Harry Morgan Jack Elam John Dehner Marie Windsor Joan Blondell Kathleen Freeman Ellen Corby |
Music by | Jack Elliot Allyn Ferguson |
Cinematography | Harry Stradling Jr. |
Edited by | William B. Gulick |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 91 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Screenplay
Latigo Smith (Garner), a gambler and confidence man, is traveling by train in frontier-era Colorado with the rich and powerful Goldie (Marie Windsor). Goldie wants desperately to marry him, a fate he wants no part of. He sneaks off the train at Purgatory, a small mining town.
He discovers that two mining companies, run by bitter rivals Taylor Barton (Harry Morgan) and Colonel Ames (John Dehner), are vying to find a "mother lode" of gold buried somewhere nearby. Dynamite blasts periodically rock the town to its foundations.
Latigo consults the town doctor (Dub Taylor) about an embarrassing problem that is not immediately revealed, but turns out to be a Goldie-related tattoo. Latigo's great weakness is a periodically uncontrollable urge to bet on roulette; he soon loses all of his money playing his "lucky" number, 23. Penniless, he starts romancing local saloonkeeper Miss Jenny (Joan Blondell). Being mistaken for infamous gunslinger "Swifty" Morgan (Chuck Connors) (whom Colonel Ames sent for) gives Latigo an idea. He talks amiable ne'er-do-well Jug May (Jack Elam) into impersonating Swifty. Latigo attracts the attention of Patience "The Sidewinder" Barton (Suzanne Pleshette), the hot-tempered daughter of Taylor, who desperately wants to escape her frontier existence, return to "Miss Hunter's College on the Hudson River, New York, For Young Ladies of Good Families", and live a life of refinement in New York City. When he and Jug side with the Bartons in a dispute, Ames sends a telegram to Swifty informing him of the situation.
Swifty arrives in town and immediately challenges the hapless Jug to a gunfight, but at the appointed time and place Latigo is there in his place, sitting atop a donkey loaded with crates of dynamite. Swifty calls Latigo's bluff, but he is startled when a man yells "fire in the hole!" to warn everyone about the next explosion, and accidentally shoots himself. The blast also panics the donkey, which charges into the a saloon/whorehouse, blowing the building up, but also uncovering the mother lode. The explosion also removes Latigo's troublesome tattoo, while leaving him uninjured.
Latigo finally wins big at roulette, betting $10,000 on 23. Jug reveals various outcomes from the back of a train taking Latigo and Patience to Denver to get married. She never does go to Miss Hunter's College, but seven of her daughters do. Jug claims he goes on to become a big star in Italian westerns.
- James Garner as Latigo Smith
- Suzanne Pleshette as Patience Barton
- Harry Morgan as Taylor Barton
- Jack Elam as Jug May
- John Dehner as Col. Ames
- Marie Windsor as Goldie
- Dick Curtis as Bud Barton
- Dub Taylor as Doc Shultz
- Joan Blondell as Jenny
- Ellen Corby as Abigail Ames
- Kathleen Freeman as Mrs. Martha Perkins
- Virginia Capers as Effie
- Henry Jones as Ez
- Ben Cooper as Colorado
- Grady Sutton as Storekeeper
- Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez as Ortiz
- Chuck Connors as "Swifty" Morgan (uncredited)
- List of American films of 1971