Man with the Gun (1955) was Robert Mitchum's first venture after he parted company with RKO Pictures, and it seemed like a safe project for him to test the waters of free agency. This serviceable sagebrusher gave the performer the sort of prototypical antihero role that he perfected during his rise to stardom, and surrounded him with an able and intriguing cast of supporting players.

The script from Richard Wilson and N.B. Stone told the story of Clint Tollinger (Mitchum), a man who learned to shoot after losing his pacifist father to gunplay. As a result, he has made a vocation of hiring himself out to communities in search of rescue from their more unsavory elements. Tollinger's bloody lifestyle has resulted in the estrangement and flight of his wife Nelly (Jan Sterling), who he has tracked to a saloon in Sheridan City where she oversees a covey of dancing girls (which includes a young Angie Dickinson).

While trying to win her back, Tollinger is entreated by the locals to help them combat a ruthless land baron (Joe Barry) who's been trying to force them off their homesteads. These twin tasks occupy Tollinger for the balance of the film's brisk 83-minute running time. Of the effective supporting cast, note has to be given Henry Hull as Sheridan's feckless marshal, and Ted de Corsia and Leo Gordon as the heavy's primary henchmen.

In his memoir Them Ornery Mitchum Boys, Mitchum's brother John told of his visit to the shoot of Man with the Gun. Laid up with a work-related injury, John needed liquid courage to ask his star sibling for a fifty-dollar handout, and had already gotten into one scuffle by the time he reached Robert's dressing room. "Just then Bob returned to the set, sized up the situation and gave me a tap with the butt of his prop revolver," John wrote. "It subdued me enough that I raged out of the studio without further violence." Robert called up his sister-in-law to assess the situation, continued John, and shortly afterwards "a messenger arrived at our house with a check for $2,000, a red rose for Nancy and a note which read, 'Dear Nancy, if you ever need anything again, you call and tell me. Don't let the bull out of his corral, hurting. Love, Bob.'"

John Mitchum also related how his brother looked out for his co-workers, such as Lenny Geer, his stunt double on the picture. "Lenny was doubling for Bob in a shoot-out sequence and after the final exchange of gunfire and stunt fall, the wardrobe department came to the fallen Lenny and started to gut a [bullet] hole in his beautiful Pendelton shirt," Mitchum wrote. "'Hold it!' Bob admonished from the sidelines. 'That shirt looks good on Lenny.' He ordered the wardrobe man to tear the inexpensive double's shirt he was wearing and exchange it temporarily with Lenny's good one. Lenny wore that Pendelton proudly for a long time."

The film represented the directing bow for Wilson, the onetime radio actor whose longtime collaboration with Orson Welles commenced when he joined the Mercury Theatre in 1937. By the time they parted company in 1951, he had served as associate producer on The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Macbeth (1948). His career credits as a director were comparatively short, but marked by flavorfully-made oaters and gangster flicks such as Al Capone (1959), Pay or Die (1960) and Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964). Man with the Gun was also the first producing credit for Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. The son of the industry pioneer embarked on a production career that continues to this day, with the upcoming remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty starring Mike Myers.

Producer: Samuel Goldwyn, Jr.
Director: Richard Wilson
Screenplay: N.B. Stone, Jr., Richard Wilson
Cinematography: Lee Garmes
Film Editing: Gene Milford
Art Direction: Hilyard Brown
Music: Alex North
Cast: Robert Mitchum (Clint Tollinger), Jan Sterling (Nelly Bain), Karen Sharpe Kramer (Stella Atkins), Henry Hull (Marshal Lee Sims), Emile Meyer (Saul Atkins), John Lupton (Jeff Castle).
C-83m.

by Jay S. Steinberg