Cinema: No. 165

The Sons of Katie Elder are Old Indestructible John Wayne and Old Impossible Dean Martin, plus a couple of young co-stars named Michael Anderson Jr. and Earl Holliman. They all come back to Clearwater, Texas, for their Ma's buryin' and find themselves in a mighty rough bind with some bad guys who have killed Pa Elder and are trying to take over the town. After the gunsmoke clears, the wrongdoers have what they deserve; the raucous Elder boys have a new image; and Katie's empty rocking chair rocks happily away to underline what Paramount Pictures calls this movie's "great theme of the civilizing maternal force at work in a still savage land."

There are some good Technicolor Panavision picture postcards of the Sierra Madre country on Mexico's northern plateau. And there is a certain fascination in watching Dean Martin's face run the gamut of unshavenness from shot to shot (for one brief sequence he seems to have a mustache). But the only niche The Sons of Katie Elder will have in cinema history is that it is 58-year-old John Wayne's 165th triumph of Right over Wrong.