The Gun and the Pulpit

About seven years earlier Robert Mitchum essayed the character of a gunfighter/preacher in Five Card Stud. Although that film was far better than The Gun And The Pulpit, this made for television is a cut above average for television film. It also has the unassailable casting of Marjoe Gortner as a false preacher.

As we know Marjoe who was only using his first name when being a child preacher did a documentary exposing the racket that huckster evangelism is. So it's fitting and proper that he play a phony preacher in The Gun And The Pulpit, a gunfighter on the run who exchanges clothes with a dead preacher on the road to escape a posse.

There's plenty of trouble in the town where he takes up the pulpit, the local Ponderosa owner David Huddleston is leaning on everybody with his gunfighters on the payroll. Marjoe's fast draw wins him a lot of admirers most especially Estelle Parsons and her nubile young daughter Pamela Sue Martin. She's the reason he's staying. And there's also Slim Pickens who knows his secret and his real identity, but knows the town needs a savior. {pun intended}.

This western moves real nice with the kind of plot that was standard fare for the front row matinée kids of the 30s and 40s. Marjor is a good western hero, maybe he should have gone into that line of work.