Randolph Scott had a long career, full of high points and some clinkers. "Gunfighters" rates right up there, and it has one of the best scenes he ever played - one of the best scenes of the Golden Age of Westerns.
It's the scene where he and Dorothy Hart fall to talking about the future, and they hit the mood exactly; it's just how two people fall in love.... all at once!
This was Hart's first film in a very short career, only five or six years; she refused to play the game by Hollywood's rules and soon left. Barbara Britton has a nice part as the younger sister in love with her father's ramrod, played by Bruce Cabot, and she is marvelous. This is one of Cabot's best performances, too.
You can see the influence of "Gunfighters" in dozens of Westerns made right through the 1950s, so much so that it's easy to think this film is cliched; but its ideas were used for the rest of the Golden Era, from the actions of supporting characters in most of Wayne's movies, to the crooked sheriff, to the most direct influence of all, the gunman desperate to hang up his pistols in Henry King's "The Gunfighter."
Gregory Peck gave a fine performance in his 1950 film but not a bit better than Randolph Scott's performance here as Brazos Kane, a man driven by his sense of honor and justice to do the very thing he hates, knowing it will destroy his relationship with the woman he loves.
It's the scene where he and Dorothy Hart fall to talking about the future, and they hit the mood exactly; it's just how two people fall in love.... all at once!
This was Hart's first film in a very short career, only five or six years; she refused to play the game by Hollywood's rules and soon left. Barbara Britton has a nice part as the younger sister in love with her father's ramrod, played by Bruce Cabot, and she is marvelous. This is one of Cabot's best performances, too.
You can see the influence of "Gunfighters" in dozens of Westerns made right through the 1950s, so much so that it's easy to think this film is cliched; but its ideas were used for the rest of the Golden Era, from the actions of supporting characters in most of Wayne's movies, to the crooked sheriff, to the most direct influence of all, the gunman desperate to hang up his pistols in Henry King's "The Gunfighter."
Gregory Peck gave a fine performance in his 1950 film but not a bit better than Randolph Scott's performance here as Brazos Kane, a man driven by his sense of honor and justice to do the very thing he hates, knowing it will destroy his relationship with the woman he loves.