The Tin Star

The Tin Star is a Western about a veteran bounty hunter, Morgan Hickman, who rides into a town still reeling from the killing of its sheriff. The young and inexperienced Ben Owens has been installed as a temporary replacement, and he wants to keep the job for good. When Ben learns that Morgan once served as a sheriff himself, he asks the older man to teach him the trade. Morgan, who holds a dim view of the office, agrees anyway, and his lessons center less on gunplay than on how a lawman deals with people.

Anthony Mann directed the film, the fifteenth of the twenty features he made in chronological order, arriving between Strategic Air Command and Man of the West. Dudley Nichols wrote the screenplay, and George Seaton and William Perlberg produced for Paramount and Perlsea Company. Henry Fonda plays Morgan opposite Anthony Perkins as Ben, with Betsy Palmer, Michel Ray, Neville Brand and John McIntire among the credited cast of fifty-nine. It runs ninety-three minutes and took in roughly a million dollars worldwide.

Audience response has been durable: on IMDb it holds 7.3/10 from about 7,500 votes, and on TMDB 7/10 from 148 votes. A critics' rating of 6.9/10 from nine reviews places professional opinion close to, though slightly below, the audience scores.