Trailer
Plot summary
Latigo Smith is a gambler and a confidence man. He crosses frontier-era Colorado on a train beside Goldie, a wealthy woman who intends to marry him. He bribes the headwaiter to help him leave the train unobserved and steps off at Purgatory, a mining town where Taylor Barton and Colonel Ames run competing companies, each racing to find a mother lode. Latigo asks the town doctor about a problem he does not explain. A weakness for roulette empties his pockets. When a rumor places the gunfighter Swifty Morgan nearby, Latigo talks Jug May, an easygoing ne'er-do-well, into posing as the man. Patience, Taylor's hot-tempered daughter, grows curious about the newcomer.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Burt Kennedy wrote in his diary while finishing the picture that he had fought with star James Garner on one of the last nights of shooting, saying Garner "played movie star on me."
- The screenplay was written by James Edward Grant, who died in 1966, four years before filming; director Burt Kennedy rewrote it but let the dead writer keep sole screen credit.
- Bill Bowers, who wrote Support Your Local Sheriff!, was asked to adapt the old Jimmy Grant story Latigo but refused; Burt Kennedy rewrote it himself, got James Garner to star, and the title was changed only at the last minute.
