Thu 23 Aug 2018
A Made-for-TV Western Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE SLOWEST GUN IN THE WEST (1960).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Comedy , TV Westerns[3] Comments
THE SLOWEST GUN IN THE WEST. Made for TV, CBS, 7 May 1960. Phil Silvers, Jack Benny, Bruce Cabot, Jean Willes, Marion Ross and Jack Albertson. Written & produced by Nat Hiken. Directed by Herschel Daugherty.
In 1950s, films like THE GUNFIGHTER, SHANE, and THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE codified the myth of the Gunfighter and etched it in stone for other films to trace. And in 1960, Phil Silvers smashed it to bits.
I saw THE SLOWEST GUN IN THE WEST as a boy of 10, more than 20 years ago now, and I don’t think it ever aired again since that initial release. I thought it was pretty funny then, and seeing it recently it seems to have stood the test of time and changing tastes. But it has acquired a B-Movie luster over the years – or perhaps it always did have, and no one ever mentioned it.
SLOWEST runs a brisk 55 minutes: about the length of a typical “B†Western from Monogram or Republic. The story is the familiar tale of a wandering stranger who rides into town and stays to clean out the outlaws, in this case led by Bruce Cabot in the same part he owned in DODGE CITY (1939). We get the Saloon Gal, the Prim-and-Proper leading lady, concerned citizens, and iconic character actors like Ed Brophy, Byron Foulger and George Chandler as Bartender, Hotel Clerk and Old-Timer, respectively.
And riding into this classic milieu, we get Phil Silvers. Phil Silvers at his comic best, as Fletcher Bissell III, aka The Silver Dollar Kid, the most cowardly non-combatant ever to ride the range. So cowardly is he that the worst outlaws of the west won’t stoop to crossing pistols with him, lest they become laughingstocks of the prairie—and hence Fletcher is the only man who can run them out of town.
Seeing this so soon after THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE, I had to admire how deftly it plays on, with, and against the familiar themes of prowess, personal code of honor, and most of all, Reputation. It’s also a hoot, as one owlhoot after another shies away from Silvers’ manifest incompetence until Dress-Heavy Cabot finds the one man whose renown is worse than Fletch’s: Chicken Finsterwald, played to pulp-novel perfection by Jack Benny.
Comic talents like these could have gotten by with anything, but writer-producer Hiken handed them a good script and they make the most of it, delivering a steady stream of chuckles and belly-laughs.
For lovers of the old-time Bs however, there’s something more here. An affectionate parody of those formulaic, cheap-ass oaters we love so much. SLOWEST GUN IN THE WEST gives us the hackneyed plot, cheap sets, and a once-in-a-cinematic-lifetime array of Western Bad Guys: Bruce Cabot, Ted de Corsia, Jack Elam, Robert Wilke, John Dierkes, and Lee Van Cleef, all at their nasty worst. With a cast like that and two fine comedians, this is a shiny little gem to treasure.
August 23rd, 2018 at 10:19 pm
May 7, 1960, was a Saturday night.
On this night, CBS ran this program, preempting Have Gun – Will Travel and Gunsmoke (which would have been reruns anyway).
Contrary to some references, this was not a pilot for a new Phil Silvers show; after Bilko ended, Silvers and his producer Nat Hiken contracted for a string of specials, mainly variety shows.
I’m guessing that CBS expected The Slowest Gun to be the same thing: staged in a New York theater with a live audience.
Nat Hiken’s genius move was to talk the CBS brass into letting him make a Hollywood Western – in Hollywood, at Revue Studios (where a lot of the genuine articles were filmed), with a cast and crew who came right out of the “real” oaters they were showing almost every night.
All the Western vets played everything straight down the middle; only Phil Silvers and Jack Benny needed to be funny, and were.
Looking at Slowest Gun today – well,
there’s that verdammte laugh track, which was redundant, and being on CBS mandated black & white, but overall this was a classic (now unfortunately forgotten, save by those who go looking in the dollar stores for C2C DVDs).
Until (unless) a Blu-Ray restoration comes around – well, take what you can get …
August 24th, 2018 at 12:07 am
Speaking of taking what you can get…here is the 53 minutes or so YouTube copy.
August 24th, 2018 at 7:25 pm
Silvers and Benny is enough for any comedy, add Hiken, and some time obviously spent watching these movies and it’s affectionate fun.