Gary Cooper cemented his reputation as an icon of the Western screen in William Wyler's 1940 film The Westerner. He stars as Cole Hardin, a wandering horseman who is brought before the kangaroo court of the colorful but deadly Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan). Playing upon Bean's obsession with musical actress Lily Langtry, Hardin talks his way out of the hangman's noose, and strikes up a friendship with the hard-drinking, short-tempered, self-proclaimed "judge." Hardin soon learns that the territory is involved in violent range wars (a dispute between cattlemen and farmers over land rights) and lends his support to the homesteaders -- becoming attracted to Jane-Ellen Mathews (Doris Davenport), the daughter of an aging corn farmer (Fred Stone). But when Bean violates his word and allows the farmers' crops to be burned, Hardin has himself deputized and prepares for a final confrontation with the west Texas dictator.
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Wyler and Toland made seven films together, including Dead End (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). At first their working relationship was strained. "I was in the habit of saying, 'Put the camera here with a forty-millimeter lens, move it to this way, pan over here, do this.'" remembered Wyler, "Well, he was not used to that. Making Westerns at MGM, I directed the camera work. I considered it part of my job. You don't do that with a man like Gregg Toland... He was an artist."

For Wyler, The Westerner was a homecoming of sorts. He had gotten his start as director by proving the speed (and quality) at which he could churn out two-reel Westerns -- a total of 21 between 1925 and 1927. In 1930 he abandoned the genre after The Storm, but would return to the American West a final time in 1958 with The Big Country.

Excerpt from TCM located HERE