Support Your Local Gunfighter
| Support Your Local Gunfighter | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| 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 |
| Music by |
Jack Elliot Allyn Ferguson |
| Cinematography | Harry Stradling Jr. |
| Edited by | William B. Gulick |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
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Running time
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91 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Support Your Local Gunfighter is a 1971 comic western film starring James Garner, directed by Burt Kennedy, and 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.
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 is besotted with Latigo and wants desperately to marry him, a fate that he wants no part of. He manages to slip off the train at Purgatory, a jerkwater mining town. Assessing the situation, he discovers that two rival companies of miners, led by Taylor Barton (Harry Morgan) and Colonel Ames (John Dehner), are racing each other to find a "mother lode" of gold buried somewhere nearby. Massive dynamite blasts periodically rock the town to its foundations, creating or embellishing various moments of comic relief throughout the film.
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 that he learns, to his chagrin, cannot be removed. Latigo's seminal weakness is gambling; he soon loses all of his money, and more, at roulette, playing his "lucky" number (23/red). After hearing a rumor that the infamous gunslinger "Swifty" Morgan (Chuck Connors) is expected in town, Latigo concocts a scam: With the help of amiable ne'er-do-well Jug May (Jack Elam) impersonating Swifty, he schemes to pay off his debts and skip town before the real Swifty makes his appearance. In the process, Latigo attracts the attention of Patience "The Sidewinder" Barton (Suzanne Pleshette), the hot-tempered daughter of Taylor, who desperately wants to escape this backwater frontier existence, attend "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. Latigo falls hard for Patience, and when he and Jug side with the Bartons in a dispute, Ames sends a telegram to Swifty informing him of the situation.
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