Q:Build a movie plot around this: Who led the gang of outlaws that robbed the stagecoach? Liberty Valance
A:
The film begins in 1910 when a successful aging U.S. senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife of twenty-five years Hallie (Vera Miles) return to the small western town Shinbone, where they met, to attend the funeral of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) a man known in the town as a good man but undistinguished.When a young local reporter presses Stoddard for an interview about why he has come to the funeral of a nobody like Doniphon, Stoddard begins a story that relates the history of the film in flashback. Stoddard tells us how when he came to the town as young newly-graduated attorney at law he was bullied by a local tough outlaw named Liberty Valence (Lee Marvin), a gunman employed by the local cattle cartel directed to keep the town in line so that the barons could monopolize the local resources to insure their beef industry.He first meets Valance when the stagecoach he is travelling in is ambushed by the outlaw and his companions.Stoddard tries to stop him from robbing a woman but he is knocked out.When Valance discovers he is a law graduate,he whips him several times,before he and his friends wander off into the night.Early the next morning,Doniphon and his friend Pompey (Woody Strode) take the unconscious Stoddard into Shinbone to rest up at Hallie's place where she runs a steakhouse.Bumbling and cowardly marshal,Link Appleyard (Andy Devine) arrives and is horrified to find out that they want him to capture Valance.He tries his best to come up with excuses about how the jurisdiction prevents him from doing anything about it,which is what the residents have come to expect from him.On one boisterous night,newspaper publisher Dutton Peabody leaves his office and runs into Appleyard who is petrified because he knows Valance is in town.Peabody goes to the restaurant for dinner,where Stoddard is helping out in the kitchen as a way of earning his keep.While he's washing the dishes,he's reading up on a law book about the marshal's jurisdiction and how he can get Valance.He finds some useful information and...