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**** “The Gunfighter.”
Playhouse. $19.98. 1950.
An aging gunfighter holes up in a town saloon, juggling his memories, seeking a rapprochement with the wife he deserted, jawing tersely with a jocular bartender, and fending off the attempts of gun-crazy kids to kill him and cash in on his reputation. Meanwhile, inexorably, doom is pounding toward him across the plains. A Western recast as a quasi-Greek tragedy--with Gregory Peck superb in the one role John Wayne said he most regretted losing. (Later, in “The Shootist,” Wayne nearly copied it.) The atmosphere is unremittingly tense, the undercurrents poignant and grim. It’s the best movie ever made by pastoralist Henry King.
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