Dodge City

At first blush Errol Flynn wasn't a likely candidate to star in Westerns. He was born in Tasmania, and certainly projected a decidedly British persona. He was resistant to be in Westerns, but made his first in 1939 in Dodge City. He was reteamed with Michael Curtiz and Olivia DeHavilland after the success of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Dodge City is claimed by many to be a classic Western, and it certainly has elements that are in that category, such as perhaps the most elaborately staged barroom brawl in cinema history. But I found it to be the kind of Western that represents a fantasy version of American settlement, with simplistic black-hat and white-hat notions of good and evil.

Flynn, not disguising his British Commonwealth roots, plays an Irishman who has settled in the West, working a variety of jobs including buffalo hunting to provide food for railroad workers in Kansas. The completed railroad creates a boomtown of Dodge City, which is a terminus for cattle drivers, and as such also becomes a lawless haven for cowboys. It comes under the control of the villainous Bruce Cabot, who runs the sheriff out of town.

Of course, the citizens ask Flynn to take over, and though he is a restless sort, he finally agrees, and manages to clean up the town and win the girl in the process. This kind of story has been told several times, and perhaps this was the first one, because it is also the most rudimentary (it is the basic template that Mel Brooks spoofed in Blazing Saddles). Flynn's character is such a Boy Scout that he isn't very interesting, and the depiction of the town is awash in a lack of authenticism.

It is a handsome production, shot in Technicolor, and with some good supporting performances, most notably Alan Hale as Flynn's sidekick (today Hale is probably best known as being the father of Alan, Jr., who would play the Skipper on Gilligan's Island).