Rio Bravo was Howard Hawks' answer to High Noon, the angst-ridden 1952 western in which Gary Cooper spent two hours of reel time trying in vain to roust the citizenry to help him exterminate the town skunk. “Now, that's a rather silly thing for a man to do,” said Hawks, “especially since at the end of the picture he is able to do the job himself. So I said, we'll do just the opposite, and take a real professional viewpoint.” Whether he was referring to John Wayne as sheriff or himself as director is a moot point which turns on Hawks' broad and humanistic definition of “professional”: High Noon was made with ideas, critics have said, Rio Bravo, with love. As John T. Chance, sheriff of a tiny Texas border town, Wayne's job is to keep a jailed killer in, and his cohorts who have the town surrounded, out. But he doesn't do it alone. During the course of these very human events he is saved or protected by a reformed drunk (Dean Martin at his finest), a gimp-legged old geezer (Walter Brennan, of course), a dance-hall gal with a past (Angie Dickinson) and a singin' cowboy (Ricky Nelson) with a future. (Hawks quote from Peter Bogdanovich interview.)