The Silver Screen Oasis

Ah yes, Dodge City.
Seen it 5 times before, but had to watch it again.
The indisputable king of the "town taming" Western subgenre, and for my sheckles, probably the best of all the big Warner Bros. formula westerns.
Thematically, no kind of a challenger to the work of Bud Boettiger or Anthony Mann or John Ford, granted . . .
But ahh, so many cherished scenes (like that saloon-destroying fight!), so much great, successful posturing by Flynn & character supporters, so many great lines, so much magnificent, evocative camera work & swelling Korngold music . .
My favorite moment?
It's tight, but I'd have to nominate the scene where Flynn's frontier Irishman Wade Hatton has just overturned a barbershop ambush, culminating with his hurling the last evil townie through the shop's plate-glass window . . .
Amiable, ursine Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, one of Flynn's two deputies, ambles up behind the dazed, sprawling goon, and hearing his boss' cheerful order to lock him up, yanks the man to his feet like a dusty ragdoll, and crows "Come on, li'l boy, I'll buy ya some candy!"
Was that really the scripted line for Williams?
I don't know, and really, who cares?
It's the kind of spontaneous-feeling brilliance that lives in that warm, bright cottage at the back of one's mind.
Bravissimo!

Don't look now, buckaroo, but there's an unfamiliar Joel McCrea western on TCM tonight (with Julie Adams, yet), called The Gunfight at Dodge City (1959) that might just be pretty entertaining. It's followed by those two cut-ups, Kirk Douglas & Burt Lancaster in John Sturges' somewhat over-familiar Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).

No, Big Boy Williams may not be in the cast, and no one could be as fine-looking a couple on screen as Flynn-De Havilland, but who knows, maybe a good bar fight will break out in these movies too.

I saw "Dodge City" last summer and was very taken with it. The movie has nearly everything, and the blazing train finale was terrific. (I guess the Marx brothers parodied it in 1940's "Go West"?)

IMHO Ann Sheridan is wasted in this film, but she does give the film " a lift " when she does appear.