The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Here is another, certainly older, movie with major star power in the cast. And it is probably the very first movie I ever saw in a theater.

Legendary director John Ford had James Stewart and John Wayne working together for the first time. Add to this Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Woody Strode, and Denver Pyle, and you have a wonderful un-western western. Vera Miles was still fairly early in her voluminous career of five decades when this movie was made.

This movie is no so much about the old west as it is about personal friendships and the early politics of frontier America. This story is only a western in that it has cowboys in it, and is set in a theoretical wild west town of Shinbone somewhere in the area surrounding southeastern Colorado.

As were many movies at the time, this was shot in black and white. It is a classic of it's genre and should be viewed by any serious film student or fan of cinema. The basic story has been used over and over. This one has a multi-layered plot that should keep the literary-minded among you satisfied.

If you don't like westerns, you should still consider this for it's integrity moral and political spin.

Watch it with someone who may or may not know how great these now old actors were in the prime of their careers.