It Was a Case of Mistaken Identity

Yep, that's what it was, mistaken identity when Melody Jones and his partner, George, rides into the town of Payneville in this 1945 movie, Along Came Jones, starring Gary Cooper (Melody Jones), William Demarest (George Fury), Dan Duryea (Monte Jarrod), and Loretta Young (Cherry de Longpre) and others. Jones and Fury ended up in Payneville because they took a wrong turn on the trail four or five hundred miles back where they should have turned south instead of north.

This Monte Jarrod had just robbed a stagecoach and shot one of the men. The law and posse were after him, the Express man was after him, and the townspeople who wanted to collect the ree-ward were after him. Everyone in Payneville thought that Melody Jones was Monte Jarrod and George Fury was his Uncle Roscoe unbeknownst to the newcomers. Cherry de Longpre jumps into the action by saving their lives and getting them out of town to her cabin in the desert, where she also has hidden the wounded Monte Jarrod.

Cherry heads them on their way to the south after Jones falls in love with her, so she can get her boyfriend Jarrod out to the north with no posse on the trail. But Jones and Fury don't fall for it and come back to her place where most of the action takes place, with a couple side trips into town. And Jarrod returns to get the money ($42,000) he stole and the girl.

By the time everything gets sorted out there is the shootout between the posse and the Jarrod gang with Jones and Cherry in the barn with Fury who hs been shot out in the desert by Jarrod and discovered by Cherry. The bungling gun-handler Jones grabs a pistol and shoots it out with Jarrod. Jones gets shot two or three times before Cherry shoots Jarrod. All ends well as Jones kisses Cherry in her living room. and gives her the reward moola.

This movie was a comedy Western and there are plenty of humor spread throughout. I have never cared too much for Dan Duryea with his long straight hair always flopping around, but it was controlled pretty much by the hat he wore in this one. Loretta Young was always a fine actress and Gary Cooper was pretty funny in his role. I had a good time watching it on Turner Classic Movies. "[It] was adapted by Nunnally Johnson from the novel Useless Cowboy by Alan LeMay and directed by Stuart Heisler" as said on Wikipedia..