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 Lost World (Crichton novel) got from Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes, who had been killed off but was later brought back. Malcolm was also considered a favorite character among readers of the first novel and people who watched its film adaptation. An early draft of the novel included a lengthy tirade by Malcolm regarding God and evolution, but Crichton removed it "because it just didn't seem to fit." In March 1995, Crichton announced that he was nearly finished writing the novel, with a scheduled release for later that year. At the time, Crichton declined to specify the novel's title or plot. Crichton later