VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Console best movie i've ever seen.

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

pruiett I rarely pan a movie. But this one never got off the ground. I watched for 50 minutes and it still did not get past the "setup" that should fuel the remainder of the movie. I loved seeing all the faces: Mickey Rooney, Jim Backus, Don "Red Ryder" Barry, Wally Cox, Jack Elam, Noah Beery, Jr., and more. Yes, lighthearted and family-friendly. But poor Dan Blocker, who was supposed to be the highlight of the movie just never perked up. I wish the lady who was supposed to show up on the train had actually come. That would have been something to wrap the movie around.Watch for nostalgia.Not late at night. it will put you to sleep.

Rick Start The towns Black Smith and his anvil are headed back east after a bout of loneliness gets him down, his mail order bride did not wait for him? His friends might let him drift but there is not another one for 50 miles, or an anvil, and that is a bigger problem. Now his poker playing buddies need to step up and do for him what no self respecting buddy would do to a bachelor, find an unattached available, marriage minded female fast, but where? They slowly gather the whole town into their dastardly, good deed doer's plot, even the only dance hall girl in town. Without a doubt each new solution creates a new problem, when is Jack due back?

tonellinon I saw this movie maybe twice--once in the theater and once on TV--all over 30 years ago. Then I obtained a very good VHS copy and it is in my collection. It is very good and deserves a release in some form. I enjoyed some very comic moments: Jack Elam plays a half-crazed, legally blind bounty hunter with thick spectacles, teaching his finger how to read a wanted poster; Jack Cassidy ends up in jail and loses his temper because the one locking him up is too stupid to understand he's got the wrong man; Nannette Fabray gives the burly Dan Blocker a big roundhouse punch which seals their romance. The plot is a classic: a mail-order bride no-show motivates the town to fix their only blacksmith up with a saloon girl substitute, who just arrives in town. There a lot of subplots that are slapstick. The scenes between Fabray and her hostess where Fabray reveals that she's unexpectedly fallen in love with the gentle giant of a blacksmith; and the scenes between Fabray and Blocker are quite good and are what makes this film better even than what its writer or director probably intended. I would have directed Fabray to keep in mind that her character--while probably matching Fabray's intelligence and robustness but not her sophistication--is not accustomed to having such deep feelings. Perhaps a scene or two more to contrast her relationship to Panama Jack with her newly-discovered capacity to deeply love a man who is not a Western stereotype (but probably closer to the majority of men actually living in the post-Civil War West), the unarmed, simple rough-cut but still part of Victorian America--blacksmith named Charlie. This movie is a hidden gem because it's a product of an old-school cast that whose careers started in an era where actors cared deeply about their work. I cannot see today's TV or movie crowd making such a movie without treating the subject matter and their characters as beneath them--or adding unneeded sex scenes, more violence, profanity, politics and message--so that they could show their constituent audiences, or their equally cynical paymasters, that they're determined to be "realistic." Folks, get a copy of this if you can; it's worth it.

ridgerunner773 I haven't seen this movie in years, but I remember I saw it at the movie theatre and really enjoyed it. It was a great chance to see Dan Blocker in another role besides "Hoss Cartwright". It also had other cast members such as Jack Elam and Mickey Rooney who were truly enjoyable to watch.