The Plainsman

Set in the years after the American Civil War, The Plainsman follows the scout and showman Buffalo Bill Cody and the marksman and gambler Wild Bill Hickok, two friends who reunite in a West unsettled by the end of the fighting. A trader named John Lattimer is selling rifles to Native American tribes defending their lands, and as tensions build toward a confrontation with the army, Hickok and Cody set out to expose the illegal arms dealing. The sharpshooter Calamity Jane, who is in love with Hickok, joins them, and the three historical figures become entangled in the conflict.

Cecil B. DeMille directed the film for Paramount, working from a screenplay by Lynn Riggs, Waldemar Young and Harold Lamb, and producing alongside William H. Pine. It followed his Cleopatra and preceded Union Pacific in a run of large-scale historical pictures that also included his 1923 and 1956 versions of The Ten Commandments. Gary Cooper plays Wild Bill Hickok, Jean Arthur plays Calamity Jane and James Ellison plays Buffalo Bill Cody, with Charles Bickford as the gunrunner Lattimer. Porter Hall appears as Jack McCall among a credited cast of 25.

The film runs 113 minutes and belongs to the western, war and romance genres. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.8 from around 2,700 votes, while on TMDB it has a 6.5 from roughly 42 votes, so the audience scores are broadly similar, with the much smaller TMDB sample offering the lower figure.