OVP: The Gunfighter (1950)

Film: The Gunfighter (1950)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell, Jean Parker, Karl Malden

Director: Henry King

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Gregory Peck: click here to learn more about Mr. Peck (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we talked through last week, headed into 1950, Peck had had a few years of alternating success-and-failure.  Films like Gentleman's Agreement and Twelve O'Clock High had succeeded, but there was enough question mark with other films flopping that it wasn't clear how Peck would hold up in the dawning era of television.  While our movie today, The Gunfighter, was not a commercial success, Peck would soon recover the following year with Captain Horatio Hornblower (which we discussed a few years ago when our Star of the Month was his leading lady Virginia Mayo), which would start a run of successful films for Peck...that wouldn't necessarily be critical hits.  David and Bathsheba, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Roman Holiday, and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit would all be big hits for the actor, but with the exception of Roman Holiday none of them were well-received by critics.  During this time frame, Peck fought his profile as a western star, frequently turning down roles for fear of typecasting, including the lead role in High Noon that would win Gary Cooper an Oscar.  An exception to that was The Gunfighter, our movie today, which was the reverse of much of his 1950's work-a middling commercial performance, but a success with the critics.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with a headstrong cowboy named Eddie trying to start an argument with Jimmy Ringo (Peck), a gunslinger whose reputation within the confines of the film rivals that of Wyatt Earp.  He shoots him dead, but it underlines the main point of Ringo's life.  A youth that made him a legend (and a criminal) has turned into a curse, as he is now hounded by men trying to shortcut to their own legend.  Chased out of town by this man's brothers, he returns to his home town, where he meets an old friend who is now the local marshall Mark Strett (Mitchell), and tries to find his wife Peggy (Westcott), who is under an assumed name because of fear that people will know her (and her son's) connection to Ringo.  There he tries to sort out his life, and we learn of his regret over leaving his wife & son, as well as we understand that part of the Ringo legend is just that, but it's impossible to escape.  In the end, another cowboy shoots the youth who has spent much of the film bragging about being just as good as Ringo (to the point where he also tries to shoot him), shoots Ringo in the back.  Ringo, dying, insists that the youth not be hanged but instead have to endure the shadowy half-life he's been forced into, as men will soon try to prove themselves against "the man who shot Ringo."

The Gunfighter was nominated for Best Motion Picture Story, and man was that earned.  There are aspects of the film that honestly function more as an episode of The Twilight Zone than as a standard western.  The film has a thoughtful treatise on what it means to make mistakes in your youth that haunt you.  You understand as we go that much of Ringo is myth, not real (for example, he disputes with an old woman exactly how many men he's killed, claiming it's far less than what she's heard), but it's something he can't escape.  His ability to have a normal life is stolen from him not by anyone else, but by his own misdeeds.  The ending is vicious, with him inflicting that pain, one far worse than a hanging, onto the young man who has no concept of what he's just done to himself by trying to steal a legend rather than earn it.

Peck is very good in this movie, and I personally found the mustache (which producer Darryl Zanuck hated), quite fetching & a good look for him.  He embodies the spirit of a man who once threw his life away, but who desperately wants it back even if he's still slightly too immature to understand at the outset that that's impossible.  The rest of the cast, though, is underwhelming and keeps this from being a classic.  Helen Westcott so underplays Peggy that you secretly wish Jean Parker (who is a saloon girl) was taking on the part as at least it would have some life to it, and Millard Mitchell, a constant presence in westerns of this era, is kind of boring in a key role as a marshall trying to protect Ringo (but more so trying to protect his own reputation due to his connection to Ringo).  Even Karl Malden as a barkeep is given nothing to do.  These side parts are crucial in giving us the more human side of Ringo, but instead of giving us the complicated reading the remainder of the picture does of legend, they feel kind of like filler.