The small town’s editor of the Shinbone Star, Dutton Peabody, a scholarly drunk played by Edmond O’Brien, does not say: ‘When history conflicts with the legend, print the legend.’ When something like this is said, Peabody is long dead after suffering a brutal beating from the violent Liberty Valance. The beating triggers the climactic gunfight in the dark main street between Liberty Valance (played by Lee Marvin) and the tenderfoot Ransom (‘Ranse’) Stoddard, the penniless brave young lawyer as played by James Stewart. Later, the rugged small-time rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) tells Stoddard that, when the gun duel took place, he actually shot Valance unnoticed from a darkened adjacent laneway, thus making Stoddard into a legendary Western hero who later becomes a famed US senator on the initial strength of killing the evil desperado.

Much later, the now elderly Stoddard returns by train to Shinbone to attend Tom’s funeral. Cornered by the pushy local newspaper man Mr Scott, he decides to tell the real story of the gunfight. When Stoddard asks Scott if he will print the sensational scoop in his modern state-wide newspaper, Scott refuses and replies: ‘This is the West, Sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’ – not exactly what Anderson quoted.

– John Ramsland, Newcastle, NSW