The best Jim Backus’s western movies

Charming tale of mountaineer-trapper Murphy's first taste "big city" life with young, sweet Sandra Dee in tow. She flees her family, which tried to trade her for some of Murphy's beaver pelts, and tags along with the reluctant Murphy. They get into all manner of trouble in town, and Murphy has to shoot the sheriff to rescue Dee from her job as a dancehall girl.

Slapstick rules in this 1964 Civil War comedy about miltary misfits and their incompetent commanders. Directed by George Marshall, and starring Glenn Ford, Stella Stevens, Melvyn Douglas, Joan Blondell, Jim Backus, Andrew Prine, Alan Hale Jr., Jesse Pearson, Michael Pate, James Griffith, Preston Foster, Yvonne Craig and the ever ubiquitous Whit Bissell.

Tracy Powell, an Indiana farmer, gets the gold fever and heads for Stockton, California in 1849. There, he abandons his first partner, Bert Killian, and teams up with Sam Wilkins, a claim jumper employed by Willis Haver. Six years later, Powell returns to Indiana and his sweetheart, Julie. They marry and he tries farming again but, on the night their son is born, he takes off again searching for gold. This time he heads for the hills with an inveterate prospector, Jimmo McCann. A decade later, the two are still hunting for their big strike when McCann is killed in an accident. Powell returns home with news of a big strike but the deserted Julie will have nothing to do with him. His friend Killian will not believe him but Haver, now a banker gives him a small loan and then beats him out of his claim. Many years pass before he comes home, now sixty-years-old, and this time, his wife and son open their home to him. But he vows to go prospecting come next spring.

A simple-minded blacksmith named Charley, well loved by the townsfolk, saves for a year to send off for a mail-order bride.