Dodge City (1939 movie)

Dodge City is a western movie starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Directed by Hungarian-turned-Hollywood filmmaker Michael Curtiz and based on a story by Robert Buckner, it was filmed in early Technicolor. As a classic western, Dodge City contains — with the possible exception of an attack by hostile Red Indians — all the stock ingredients and clichés the genre has usually been associated with. It chronicles the rise, after the end of the Civil War, of the small frontier post of Dodge City, Kansas to civilized and respectable town and trading place for cattle. In the process, Dodge City has to get rid of the baddies terrorizing the citizens, and it takes a new sheriff and his deputy to clean up the town and introduce law and order.

Memorable scenes

• The railroad as a symbol of progress: a race between the Iron Horse and the old stagecoach which has served Dodge City for decades but whose time is now over
• Rusty attending a meeting of the "Pure Prairie League of Dodge City", a gathering of elderly women strongly associated with the temperance movement
• A saloon brawl, triggered by a party of Confederate veterans ("My Heart Turns Back to Dixie") -- the North against the South, a decade after the end of the Civil War
• The editor of the Dodge City Star, trying to be brave and publishing an exposé about Surrett and his evil machinations, being murdered by Yancy -- investigative journalism and its bitter consequences
• A speeding train on fire -- the final shoot-out.