Tourneur uses historical setting and genre conventions to establish only very basic identities of characters.
--Roger McNiven, "Jacques Tourneur" in American Directors (McGraw Hill, 1983)
Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterton were regular characters in Westerns, both on TV and in movies, and here they are again. Earp is hoping to start a small business of some sort in Wichita, where Masterson is working on the local newspaper. Then trailhands ride in to town to "hurrah" it and a small boy is accidentally killed and Earp accepts the mayor's offer to become the new marshal and proceeds to ban handguns. The powerful businessmen in town try to convince the mayor to rescind the offer and when he refuses they try to kill Earp.
Earp is played effectively by Joel McCrea, who at this point in his career was working exclusively in Westerns, with Vera Miles as his love interest. McCrea arrive as a distant speck on the hills in the Cinemascope frame (cinematography by Harold Lipstein) and Tourneur keeps his role low-key, with Earp's gun drawn quickly and quietly when necessary. As he did so beautifully in his black-and-white films --e.g., Out of the Past (1947) -- Tourneur uses only natural light sources.
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