Watch Destry (1954) Online

The sheriff of a small town is shot and the crooked mayor, The Honorable Hiram J. Sellers (Edgar Buchanan), and leading crook, Phil Decker (Lyle Bettger), appoint a drunk, Reginald T. “Rags” Barnaby (Thomas Mitchell), to take the position hoping that he will be easily controlled by them. Rags announces he is to give up the drink and turns down Decker as deputy telling them he has someone else in mind, Tom Destry.

Destry (Audie Murphy) arrives on the stagecoach with great fanfare but Rags is disappointed to find out that he is a very young man and refuses to carry a gun. Destry finds out that the previous sheriff may not have died of a heart attack as has been claimed. Destry suspects instead that the sheriff was murdered while trying to resolve a land dispute, and he sets about finding out how the sheriff died. Eventually, it becomes clear that Decker killed the sheriff in order to continue his plot to obtain all the land necessary to control and exploit the transit of cattle over those properties. After a gun battle in the saloon, Destry restores law and order to the town.