The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw hours of Westerns per week, and Walsh felt that a spoof of the genre would be a good choice for the studio, especially with the new CinemaScope process to properly display the desolate background of a lawless town in the American West. Fox decided to make the film and decided to give Walsh majority of the control over the movie's production. The studio still wanted Clifton Webb to play Jonathan Tibbs, the lead character, but Walsh preferred British actor Kenneth More. Moore had become popular in films such as "Genevieve" (1953) and "The Admirable Crichton" (1957), and Walsh felt he
The Admirable Crichton society". At the beginning of Act Two, Loam, his family and friends, and Crichton are shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island. The resourceful Crichton is the only one of the party with any practical knowledge, and he assumes, initially with reluctance, the position of leader. This role begins to take on sinister tones when he starts training Ernest, one of the young aristocrats with them, to break a liking for laboured epigrams by putting his head in a bucket of water whenever he makes one. Crichton's social betters at first resist his growing influence and go their separate ways, but