The Shakiest Gun in the West

The Shakiest Gun in the West is a 1968 Western comedy film starring Don Knotts. It was directed by Alan Rafkin and written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum. The film is a remake of The Paleface, a 1948 movie starring Bob Hope and Jane Russell. Jesse W. Haywood graduates from dental school in Philadelphia in 1870 and goes west to become a frontier dentist. As a "city slicker", he finds himself bungling in a new environment. On his way west, the stagecoach is held up and robbed by two masked bandits. A posse catches one of them, Penelope "Bad Penny" Cushing. Facing prison, Penelope is... offered a pardon if she will track down a ring of gun smugglers that also involves a local Indian tribe. She tricks Haywood into a sham marriage as a disguise. Haywood inadvertently becomes the legendary "Doc Haywood" after he guns down "Arnold the Kid" and performs other exploits . There are a couple of scenes which parody similar scenes in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with John Wayne and James Stewart. The stage coach holdup scene is the first encounter that both city dudes have with the "wild west".
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