Alfred L. Werker's At Gunpoint (1955)

 Fred MacMurray has never gotten his due as an actor; though he made successful soap operas (Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow, 1956), comedies (Remember the Night, 1940, written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitch Leisen) and film noir (Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, 1944) he seems unfortunately remembered mostly for his TV program My Three Sons (1960-1972) and his awful movies for Disney (The Shaggy Dog, 1959).  MacMurray also starred in seventeen Westerns, mostly low-budget films with journeymen directors, with the exception of the excellent The Texas Rangers, directed by King Vidor in 1936.

Alfred L. Werker was one of those journeymen directors who made a number of superb Westerns in the fifties (see my previous posts), including At Gunpoint.  Werker's film is seen as something of an imitation of Fred Zinneman's High Noon (1952), but I see it as more of a response to Zinneman's film, just as Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo (1959) is.  High Noon was written by Carl Foreman, a blacklisted writer who was understandably bitter about how his friends had deserted him, just as the townfolk in the film deserted sheriff Gary Cooper.  In Werker's film the townspeople try to get shopkeeper Jack Wright (MacMurray)to leave town after killing a bank robber, when the remaining members of the outlaw gang kill a new sheriff and threaten the entire town.  But Jack sticks to his guns, even when his brother-in-law Wally (James O'Hara) is killed (the gang thought he was Jack).  Jack gives an inspiring talk to the town about the importance of community and at the last moment the townspeople and his wife Martha back him up.

At Gunpoint was written by Daniel Ullman and photographed in color and cinemascope by Ellsworth Fredericks, both of whom were involved with many Westerns on film and on television.  MacMurray is strong and forthright as the shopkeeper who won't back down, even though he barely knows how to use a gun.  Martha is played with intelligence and subtlety by Dorothy Malone.  Walter Brennan is the chess-playing doctor who stands by MacMurray when no one else will and the rest of the cast includes character actors John Qualen, Skip Homeier and Whit Bissel.  Werker's direction is precise and graceful.