Wichita (1955)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
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Synopsis by Hal Erickson
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!)
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Keywords
bad-guy, bank-personnel, cowboy, frontier, good-guy, killing, lawman, lawyer, legend [fable], newspaper, outlaw [Western], peace, town, weapons, west, wife
