Destry is a 1954 American western film directed by George Marshall and starring Audie Murphy, Mari Blanchard, Lyle Bettger and Thomas Mitchell.
Sellers (Edgar Buchanan), and leading crook Phil Decker (Lyle Bettger) appoint the town drunk, Reginald T. "Rags" Barnaby (Thomas Mitchell), as the new sheriff, believing that he will be easily controlled by them.
Rags, however, immediately announces he is giving up drinking and refuses to accept Decker as his new deputy, telling them that he has someone else in mind: Tom Destry, the son of a famed two-fisted lawman.
Destry (Audie Murphy) arrives on the stagecoach with great fanfare, but Rags is disappointed to find out that unlike his father the son is a young man who refuses to carry a gun.
Eventually it becomes clear that Decker shot & killed the sheriff in order to further his plans to obtain all the land necessary to control and exploit the transit of cattle over those properties.