Dodge City (1939)

Dodge City. A wide-open cattle town run by Jeff Surrett. Even going on a children's Sunday outing is not a safe thing to do. What the place needs is a fearless honest Marshal. A guy like Wade Hatton (Errol Flynn), who helped bring the railroad in. It may not help that he fancies Abbie Irving (Olivia de Havilland), who won't have anything to do with him since he had to shoot her brother. But that's the West. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Lee Irving fires his six-shooter revolver eight times without reload it. Flynn played opposite Olivia de Havilland in seven other films, including Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Santa Fe Trail, and They Died with their Boots On.

This was one of the first westerns to star a major actor in Flynn and it was shot in technicolor. It is also the essential hollywood western in that it has all the cliches of the genre. A stranger comes to town, Hatton the cattle trail boss. He gets of the wrong side of the girl, has a past with the main villain, who runs the town from the casino. The stranger become sheriff to clean up the town, while the girl becomes a, gasp, reporter for the local paper reporting on such things as what the women are wearing and who is having a baby, instead of being at home like a good girl. The new sheriff has a side kick who means well but has a problem with the bottle and gets himself into trouble. It has a saloon brawl, one of the most quintessential barroom brawls I have ever seen, which totally destroys the saloon/casino with people thrown through windows and such (the next day the saloon is back to normal). the eight shot six shooter. It had a gun fight on a train between four people where at least sixty shot, if not more were fired and nobody is shown reloading. I don't think I heard the word "tarnation" but someone did say "Okay boys, string 'im up." And to top it off...it has a character named Tex. How cool is that?