Fort Dobbs

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Fort Dobbs is the first of three westerns, directed by Gordon Douglas, which starred Clint Walker. (Next came "Yellowstone Kelly" in 1959 and "Gold of the Seven Saints" in 1961.) Based on a screenplay by George W. George and Burt Kennedy, with black-and-white photography provided by William H. Clothier, this 93 minute movie was released by Warner Brothers and was intended to capitalize on Clint Walker's success in the "Cheyenne" TV series. Boxoffice results, however, tended to be modest, thus reinforcing the notion that audiences were not likely to pay for at the theater what they could see at home for free.

"Fort Dobbs" co-starred Virginia Mayo, Brian Keith, and Richard Eyer. Its plot concerns a passing stranger who, after rescuing from peril a woman and her young son, escorts them to the presumed safety of a frontier fort. Despite various handicaps, romance between the stranger and the woman slowly blossoms along the way.

Though a sturdy example of "Grade-B" film-making, "Fort Dobbs" suffers from the casting of Virginia Mayo. She and Walker fail to find the necessary "chemistry," perhaps because she was more than six years older than her co-star, and thus their "romance" seems neither plausible nor compelling.

Not surprisingly, Walker removes his shirt at one point in this movie, thus giving audiences a look at his famous 48-inch chest. However, despite the fact he's shirtless in only one scene, virtually every ad for "Fort Dobbs" featured Walker's bare chest to the exclusion of all other factors.