The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) is a Western comedy directed by John Huston — watch it online on iFILM. Paul Newman plays the self-appointed judge who declared himself the law west of the Pecos River.

After a gang beats and robs Roy Bean within an inch of his life, he shoots his way back to power and starts dispensing frontier justice on anyone who passes through. John Milius wrote the screenplay as a picaresque: each stranger who rides in gets sentenced, pardoned, or hanged depending on Bean's mood. The cast stacked around Newman is remarkable — Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Roddy McDowall, Stacy Keach, and Huston himself appearing in the film he directed.

Huston made it less as biography and more as a comedy about how the West manufactured its own legends. Released in 1972 as the classical Western was fading, it plays like a fond and self-aware send-off — funny, mildly melancholy, and in no hurry to take itself seriously. Watch The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) online on iFILM.