The Gunfighter is a 1950 American Western film directed by Henry King and starring Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell and Karl Malden.

Strett gives Bromley a severe beating and banishes him from Cayenne, musing that it probably won't be long before "the man who shot Ringo" meets his own grisly fate.

At his well-attended public funeral, Peggy proudly reveals to the townspeople for the first time that she is Mrs. Jimmy Ringo and sits next to Strett as her husband is buried.

The film rights to The Gunfighter were originally purchased by Columbia Pictures, which offered the Jimmy Ringo role to John Wayne.

Wayne turned it down, despite having expressed a strong desire to play the part, because of his longstanding hatred for Columbia's president, Harry Cohn.

[3][4] The script was loosely based on the purported exploits of an actual western gunfighter named Johnny Ringo, a distant cousin of the outlaw Younger family and enemy of Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers.

Others included the World War II film Twelve O'Clock High (1949), David and Bathsheba (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Bravados (1958) and Beloved Infidel (1959).

In the original ending, Hunt Bromley was arrested by the town marshal, but studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck was enraged at this resolution, so King and Johnson rewrote the final scene.

Writing for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther noted in his June 24, 1950, review: "The addicts of Western fiction may find themselves rubbing their eyes and sitting up fast to take notice before five minutes have gone by in Twentieth Century Fox's The Gunfighter, which came to the Roxy yesterday.

"[10]Variety's website review says "There's never a sag or off moment in the footage ...despite all the tight melodrama, the picture finds time for some leavening laughter.

[14] The film was nominated for Best Motion Picture Story for writers William Bowers and André de Toth during the 23rd Academy Awards.

Another version of the story appeared in 1957 in the series The 20th Century Fox Hour entitled "The End of a Gun", with Richard Conte in the role of Jimmy Ringo.