Support Your Local Sheriff!

Support Your Local Sheriff is a 1969 American Technicolor comedic western film distributed by United Artists, directed by Burt Kennedy, written by William Bowers, and starring James Garner, Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan, Harry Morgan, Jack Elam and Bruce Dern.

The Old West frontier town of Calendar, Colorado, springs up almost overnight when the rather klutzy and hotheaded Prudy Perkins Joan Hackett discovers gold in a freshly dug grave during a funeral. Her father Olly Harry Morgan becomes mayor of the new settlement. He and the other members of the town council bemoan the twin facts that the place has become a drunken roundtheclock freeforall, and that to ship out all the gold they are mining, they must pay a hefty fee to the Danbys, a family of ranchersbandits who control the only shipping route out of town. Most people are too busy digging to take time out to be sheriff, and those who are willing to put down their shovels quickly die.This all changes with the arrival in town of Jason McCullough James Garner, a calm and exceptionally competent man from back East who says he is only passing through town on his way to Australia. While in the town saloon, he sees young Joe Danby Bruce Dern gun a man down. Needing money after discovering the towns ruinous rate of inflation, McCullough demonstrates his uncanny firearms ability to the mayor and town council, and becomes the new sheriff. He breaks up a street brawl and while at the Perkins house meets Prudy under for her mortifying circumstances. McCullough then arrests Joe and tosses him in the town jail, which has everything a sheriff needs except iron bars for the cell doors and windows. McCullough keeps the nonetoobright Joe imprisoned through the use of a chalk line, some dribbles of red paint, and applied psychology. ........

Source: Wikipedia