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
Kenneth More that dependable, reliable quality of the great Hollywood stars – you would trust him through thick and thin. And he was more humorous than, say, Gary Cooper, more down-to-earth than, say, Cary Grant. "The Admirable Crichton" was the third most popular movie at the British box office in 1957. In 1957 More had announced that he would play the lead role of a captain caught up in the Indian Mutiny in "Night Runners of Bengal" but the film was never made. More turned down an offer from Roy Ward Baker to play a German POW in "The One That Got