The western genre we know and love today come in the wake of these early films set in the wild country.
When naming famous cowboy actors, Tasmanian-born Errol Flynn, best remembered as a gallant swashbuckler in medieval or Elizabethan England, is hardly the first to come to mind. However, besides his adventures as Robin Hood and his buccaneering as the Sea Hawk, the Warner Bros. star made eight feature film westerns.
His first two films in the genre shared similar titles and casts and were directed by Michael Curtiz, but were strikingly different in theme. The first is a straight-shooting cowboy picture full of well-known genre tropes, which would inspire westerns for years. The second is a moving Civil War picture set against the backdrop of one of the West’s most infamous towns.
‘Dodge City’ (1939)
In 1866, buffalo-hunters Wade Hatton (Flynn), Rusty (Alan Hale), and Tex (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams) have helped Col. Dodge (Henry O’Neill) complete a new stretch of railroad to Dodge City, Kansas. Six years later, Dodge City has grown into a lawless nest of thieves and gunmen, ruled by Hatton’s old nemesis, Jeff Surrett (Bruce Cabot). Hatton returns to the city to guard a herd of cattle and a wagon train, whose passengers include Abbie Irving (Olivia de Havilland) and her troublesome, drunken younger brother, Lee (William Lundigan). When Lee dies in a cattle stampede, Irving blames Hatton.
