First off the head star Joel McCrea does a great job in portraying a man of the west. He is tall, has a good build, great demeanor and comes across mellow until he has to come across another way. This one has it all: Bad and good guys, love interest, lots of horses, cattle, cowboys, shooting, drinking, saloon activities, painted ladies, piano playing with a touch of what it was like back then at the start of the cattle boom along with the railroad teaming up. Good supporting staff plus direction makes it come alive and make sense. We all have heard about the shoot-out at the OK corral in Tombstone but this takes place prior to that in Wichita where he had done some good work. They even mention in this movie that he was known for some other heroic deed prior to that. So we get to be in a part of his history courtesy of this movie. Pay special attention to his sidearm. Its a cannon and supports the premise of one shot one kill and don't make me pull-it which btw Earp utters a couple of times which helps to build tension and suspense. Very easy in this movie to root for the good guys and boo the bad guys. Nice closure at the end and I highly recommend singing along with the end credit song to just end it all on a whooping good note. Those old Western songs do the trick! I ate some home roasted pine nuts and had a tasty drink during this movie plus a meat dish with Quinoa all delicious. Plan your watching now and enjoy. Let's ride all you pards!

The award-winning Golden Globe western for Best Outdoor Drama in 1956, "Wichita" reunited "Cat People" director Jacques Tourneur and leading man Joel McCrea for the third and final time. Previously, they teamed up to make the exceptional "Stars in My Crown" (1950) and "Stranger on Horseback" (1955). Although Tourneur won more kudos for his quiet little horror movies with Val Lewton, the Parisian native was no stranger to horse operas. In addition to his Joel McCrea westerns, he helmed "Canyon Passage" with Dana Andrews and "Great Day in the Morning" with Robert Stack. "Wichita" is a standard-issue, town-taming oater with McCrea cast as Wyatt Earp before he acquired his reputation as a lawman. Incidentally, when McCrea made this western, his portrayal of Earp was the tenth time that this famous badge-totter had been depicted. Prolific scenarist Dan Ullman, who also penned the screenplay for another McCrea sagebrusher "The Gunfight at Dodge City," would later reunite with Tourneur on "Great Day in the Morning." Ullman covered all the tropes in this wild and woolly western about cowboys herding cattle into a new railroad town and then blowing off with pent-up aggression as well as their pay on liquor and women. This western marked another collaboration between producer Walter Mirisch who had produced "The Gunfight at Dodge City" as well as "Fort Massacre" with McCrea. Mirisch assembled a first-rate cast that included several seasoned western actors, among them Jack Elam, Robert J. Wilke, Edgar Buchanan, Walter Coy, I. Stanford Jolly, John Smith, and Peter Graves.Wyatt Earp (Joel McCrea of "The Virginian") rides into the wide-open cattle town on the inauguration of its first herd. In no time, he makes a reputation for himself when he foils a bank robbery and arouses the interest of the wealthiest townspeople. They marvel at his ability to handle a six-shooter without killing anybody and promptly offer him a badge that a lesser man is wearing. Politely but firmly, Wyatt turns them down until the drunken cowhands start shooting the town up and accidentally kill an innocent five-year old standing at an open window and watching their shenanigans. Town mayor Andrew Hope (Carl Benton Reid of "Escape from Fort Bravo") swears Earp in as marshal and our hero marches into the dark street armed with his six-gun and a long- barreled shotgun. He arrests the cowboys and herds them off to jail with the help of a local newspaper reporter, Bat Masterson (Keith Larson of "Last of the Badmen"), who later signs on to become his deputy before Earp's brothers Morgan (Peter Graves of "The Five-Man Army" and James (John Smith of TV's "Laramie") ride into town. Despite their repeated efforts to hire Wyatt and his general reluctance to accept the badge, the town wheels are pleased with his performance. Those halcyon days are short-lived after Wyatt issues a town proclamation that guns cannot be worn in town. Railroad entrepreneur Sam McCoy (Walter McCoy of "The Searchers") objects to this ordinance and others like fear like he does that Wyatt has doomed Wichita. When the cattlemen get wind of this law, the town big-wigs worry that they will divert their herds elsewhere and prosperity will be a thing of the past. For a while, Wyatt drives a wedge between them. The mayor refuses to fire him, while the others plot to drive him out."Wichita" is an above-average western with sturdy production values and good performances.

here we got another pretty old guy playing a middle-aged romeo and the legendary hero. this mediocre western provided tailor made shirts and pants, cool gun belts, crazy low-life mindless childish cowboys. when they reached Wichita, the horses they rode in, lined up along the street in front of the taverns and bars just like what we did today, parking our cars one by one if we were lucky enough to find a space where the meter was running, 4 hoofs replaced by 4 wheels, the only difference is those horses didn't have to pay state and city taxes to get the license plates, pay the annual vehicle registration fee, horses riding over two years didn't need to pay another fee for smog check. guns were like adult toys in moronic childish hands to shoot aimlessly. nowadays, the guns fired from the thugs and gang-bangers to the sky in los Angeles or other big cities, the stray bullets also killed a lot of people.all the western movies always come with loud music to glorified the scenes, when train arrived, the main character rode into town, before and after the duels, or rode into wildness, into the sunset afterward, the sound track would blast loud music to accommodate those scenes, some of the movies even never stopped playing music. this kinda format really annoyed me to the extreme and i have to turn down the volume all the time when i watched these kinda movies and i am tired of it.

The film was well developed in Wichita where appeared Wyatt Earp (Joel McCrea) as one of the many lawman hired to keep the peace . Wyatt Earp was a gunman and sometime peace officer whose legendary reputation as a paragon of law and order was largely manufactured by himself and his biographer Stuart Lake . Undoubtedly he was also a man of great courage and gunfighting skill . After working as a freighter and buffalo hunter Earp served as a policeman in Wichita (during 1875-76 years) and then as an assistant town marshal of Dodge city . Wichita was a major cattle town that started life as a trading post for the Indians who had a village nearby and later a white settlement developed around . The town was incorporated as a third class city in 1871, and the following year , when the railroad reached the location , it becomes a booming railhead of the cattle drives from Texas up the Chisholm trail . Like other cattle towns (Abilene) the rowdy , free-spending cowboys attracted saloon keepers , gambling houses , brothels , dance houses and all types of frontier riff-raff , the city became notorious for its lawlessness and vice , serving the needs of Texas cowboys . Wichita was the leading cattle shipping center , with 200.000 cattle and 2.000 cowboys flooding into the area at the height of the station . At the movie the cowboys (such as Robert J.Wilke and Jack Elam) amuse themselves shooting the air and is when Wyatt Earp intervenes to keep the order . He is helped by his brothers James (John Smith) and Morgan (Peter Graves) who was badly wounded in the explosive showdown known as the Gunfight at the O.K .Corral (26 October 1881) . At the film appears Bat Masterson (Keith Larsen) working as a journalist . Bat was also a peace officer and gunfighter of legendary reputation as Earp and spent the last twenty years of his life as a popular sports writer on a New York newspaper , moving on to Dodge City , he served as a police officer and became a comrade of Wyatt . The motion picture develops pretty well the events around Wichita . The casting is frankly magnificent as the main characters (Joel McCrea , Vera Miles) as well as the excellent supporting actors (Edgar Buchanan , Lloyd Bridges , Wallace Ford and Sam Peckinpah plays a bit part as a bank teller). The picture was well directed by Jacques Tourneur . Rating : Good Western , well worth watching .