Support Your Local Sheriff!

Support Your Local Sheriff! (also known as The Sheriff) is a 1969 American comedy Western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring James Garner, Joan Hackett, and Walter Brennan. The supporting cast features Harry Morgan, Jack Elam, Bruce Dern, and Chubby Johnson. The picture was distributed by United Artists and produced by William Bowers (who also wrote the screenplay) and Bill Finnegan. The film is a parody of a common Western trope: the selfless, rugged stranger who tames a lawless frontier town. Its title was derived from a popular 1960s campaign slogan: "Support Your Local Police". Plot The Old West town of Calendar in the Colorado Territory springs up almost overnight when clumsy, hotheaded Prudy Perkins notices gold in a freshly dug grave during a funeral. Her father, bumbling farmer Olly, becomes the first mayor of the new settlement, but soon he and the other elected councilmen find themselves and the townspeople at the mercy of the corrupt Danby family, who force the prospectors to pay them a toll for using the only road in or out of Calendar. The town has no sheriff, as all the men are busy searching for gold, and the few who have taken the job have been run out of town or killed. Jason McCullough, a confident and exceptionally skilled gunfighter planning to emigrate to Australia, sees Joe Danby kill a man over a card game in the town's saloon. Needing money after Calendar's high prices leave him broke, McCullough takes the job of sheriff, impressing the mayor and council with his uncanny marksmanship. He breaks up a street brawl and becomes attracted to Prudy, despite her attempts to avoid him due to the embarrassing circumstances under which they first met. McCullough arrests Joe and tosses him in the town's unfinished jail, which lacks bars for the cell doors and windows; he uses several clever tricks to manipulate Joe and keep him from escaping.