A Leap From Small Screen To Large

James Arness Takes Starring Part in Gun The Man Down (1956)

John Wayne's Batjac company produced several westerns written by Burt Kennedy (Seven Men From Now most notable), and I can't help thinking Wayne would have been better served starring in at least one of them rather than going abroad for Legend Of The Lost and The Barbarian and The Geisha. A Gun The Man Down was modest, yes, little better than a TV program at feature-length to Wayne's mind, and maybe that's why he used Jim Arness, a vid-hit in Gunsmoke, to lead. Arness had to be borrowed from the series by former employer Wayne, with Gun The Man Downlisted in trades as independent effort of producer Robert Morrison (Wayne's brother) and Andrew McLaglen, this the latter's first feature credit as director. It's a spare western, mostly town-set for economy's sake, with good dialogue by Kennedy taking up slack for lack of action. Arness is an "outlaw" by definition, his skirts kept clean (other gang members do the killing) so as to survive a Code-sanctioned finish. The Morrison-McLaglen team guided Seven Men From Now (its director Budd Boetticher) and Man In The Vault in a same year, though John Wayne confided in a letter to John Ford that maybe he'd brought them along too fast. Based on good result got with Gun The Man Down, JW may have been unduly critical.