In 1911, recently widowed Lucretia 'Lu' Rogers (Debbie Reynolds) wants to go out and earn her own money and find a place of her own for her family, an alternative to finding a suitable replacement husband. So, Lu leaves her two children in New York City with her frosty mother-in-law, Mrs. Rogers (Isobel Elsom), and relocates to Charleyville, Arizona Territory, where she accepts an offer to work for a storekeeper, an old friend of her late husband.
Upon arrival, Lu learns her benefactor has been killed in a holdup ...and she is without any prospects. But Aggie Gates (Thelma Ritter) feels sorry for this greenhorn self supporting woman from the East and agrees to take this city girl on as a hired ranch hand. Lu's outspoken nature and good looks win her the admiration of both Dan Jones (Steve Forrest), the handsome gambler and owner of the local saloon, and Pat Collins (Andy Griffith), a mother-dominated rancher. Along the way, both men vie for her hand.
Aggie tries to marry off Lu to Pat, but Pat's mother, Mrs. Vera Collins (Marie Blake as Blossom Rock), discourages the match. When Lu, who is disgusted by the lack of law and order in the town, proves that the dishonest Sheriff Burns (Ken Scott), is in league with gunmen, she gets the women and the law-abiding citizens of Charleyville to recall the Sheriff and elect her as the new Sheriff.
Burns retaliates by attacking and looting the town and kidnaping Lu. But, Dan, Pat, and the townspeople form a posse, raid the gunmen's hideout, and rescue Lu. The reward money enables Lu to bring her two children to the new state of Arizona. As she throws her arms around Dan, Lu tosses her sheriff's badge to Pat.
A 1961 American CinemaScope Comedy Western film directed by Vincent Sherman, produced by Jack Cummings, screenplay by Oscar Saul and Clair Huffaker, based on the novel "Star in the West" by Richard Emery Roberts, cinematography by Ellis W. Carter starring Debbie Reynolds, Andy Griffith, Steve Forrest, Juliet Prowse and Thelma Ritter. This story was inspired by Richard Robert's mother. Years before making this, Vincent Sherman had been a contract director at Warner Brothers, where he helmed multiple films with some of the studio's biggest stars, including Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Anne Sheridan.
Debbie Reynolds and Thelma Ritter worked well together and they would do so again in the much better "How the West Was Won" (1962). Ritter's character is named 'Aggie' in both movies. Blossom Rock, the actress playing Andy Griffith's smothering mother here, would later achieve TV immortality as the irascible 'Grandma' in ABC's hit 1964 sitcom "The Addams Family." Eleanor Audley, the elegant older woman who leads the townfolk in pleading with Reynolds to run for sheriff, was one of Hollywood's busiest and best known character actresses. She was also known for doing voices for animated Disney movies, as both the wicked stepmother in "Cinderella" (1950) and the evil sorceress Maleficent in "Sleeping Beauty" (1959).
Debbie Reynolds' character is elected sheriff. Her co-star of this movie, Andy Griffith, played the sheriff of Mayberry in the eponymously named television series "The Andy Griffith Show", which started the year before this movie was released.
When she made this, Reynolds was dealing with the enormous publicity of being part of an infamous romantic triangle - Debbie, Eddie and Liz. The public at the time seemed endlessly fascinated by every new development in the "storyline" of Eddie Fisher's leaving his marriage (and children) with Reynolds to pursue a hot-and-heavy romance with the newly widowed Elizabeth Taylor. One of the children Fisher walked out on grew up to be Carrie Fisher.
Although not a note of the song is sung, this sparkling comedy's title is taken from a popular song of the year before. The Oscar nominated Sammy Cahn and James van Heusen tune was written for the 1960 Bing Crosby film High Time, and became a hit for both Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennet. Its melody is heard as incidental music on this film"s soundtrack. This film's plot is similar to the Judy Garland hit "The Harvey Girls" (1946), and major elements of this film's plot were "borrowed" for the comedy western "The Ballad of Josie" (1967), which starred Doris Day, playing a widowed mother trying to make it on her own in the old West, not unlike Reynolds does here. The joke of Reynolds falling face first into a mud puddle right before meeting a potential romantic partner is "borrowed" from the Doris Day musical "Calamity Jane" (1953).
Well worth seeing and as much different from a typical western as you can find! It's hard not to like this Western romp and Reynolds is at her spunky best showing almost the same stamina she would show later in the marvelous "Unsinkable Molly Brown" (1964). Cute and clever, and more than anything else, there's good clean fun here...along with being unusual, and a fine sense of atmosphere and nuance makes this one of Debbie's best comic vehicles.