Movies - Support Your Local Sheriff!

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	Movies - Support Your Local Sheriff!

Support Your Local sheriff! is a comic western film starring James Garner and Harry Morgan. Other actors include Joan Hackett, Bruce Dern, Kathleen Freeman, Jack Elam, Dick Peabody, Walter Brennan and Gene Evans.

Synopsis

The film takes place in a western frontier town which springs up almost literally overnight when the rather klutzy and hotheaded Prudy Perkins (Hackett) discovers gold in a grave during a funeral. Her father Ollie (Morgan) ends up being mayor of the new settlement. He and the members of the town council bemoan the twin facts that the place has become a drunken round-the-clock free-for-all, and that in order to ship out the masses of gold they are mining, they must pay a hefty fee to the Danbys, a family of ranchers/bandits who control the only route out of town. Most people are too busy digging gold to take time out to be sheriff, and those who are willing to put down their shovel quickly die.

This all changes with the arrival in town of Jason McCullough (James Garner) a calm and hyper-competent man from "back East" who is passing through town "on his way to Australia." While in the town saloon, he sees young Joe Danby (Dern) gun down a man, essentially for fun. Needing money after discovering the town's ruinious rate of inflation, McCullough then demonstrates his uncanny firearms ability to the mayor, and becomes the new sheriff. After breaking up a street brawl and meeting Prudy under (for her) mortifyingly embarrassing circumstances, McCullough arrests Joe and tosses him in the town jail, which has everything a sheriff needs except iron bars on the cells. In the process of doing all this, he acquires a semi-willing deputy in the form of Jake (Elam), who was previously nothing more than the "town character." The arrest attracts the attention of the patriarch of the Danby family (Brennan). While the rest of the town immediately quiets down under McCullough's reign, "Pa" mounts various efforts to get Joe out of jail. None of them work and he then brings in a string of hired guns, who are equally unsuccessful. As this happens, Prudy spars romantically with McCullough, McCullough and Jake go on a monumentally unsuccessful search for gold, and to Joe's relief bars are finally installed in the jail.

The climax of the film sees Pa Danby summoning scores of his relatives to launch an all-out assault on McCullough. McCullough's first impulse is to just leave town and resume his trip to Australia, but when Prudy expresses her approval of this sensible idea, he announces that it sounds cowardly and decides to stay. The rest of the townfolk announce their disapproval of this new idea, and officially vote to not help in any way. Thus the Danby mob rides in faced only by McCullough, Jake and Prudy. After a lengthy gunfight, McCullough bluffs his way to victory using hostage Joe and the cannon mounted in the center of town. The Danbys are all hauled off to jail. After McCullough makes his peace with the townfolk, he and Prudy get engaged, and he walks her home. In a closing monologue, Jake directly informs the audience that they get married and McCullough goes on to become governor of the state, while he, Jake, becomes sheriff and then "one of the most beloved characters in western folklore."

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