6 Comedy Western Movies, In Honor of ‘The Lone Ranger’ Starring Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer

Movie #4 – The Apple Dumpling Gang

Year – 1975

The Apple Dumpling Gang has a special place in my heart because it’s the first movie I ever saw in the theater. The film featured the first pairing of Tim Conway and Don Knotts and would go on to be Disney’s most successful film of the 1970s. It was also one of the first movies they ever released on video tape.

Bill Bixby plays a bachelor who is entrusted with the care of three unwanted orphans. But those orphans become a lot more “wanted” when they discover a gold nugget worth tens of thousands of dollars. Bixby was the star but it was Conway and Knotts who stole the show especially in a scene involving a bank-heist and long, unwieldy firehouse ladder. It was piece of physical comedy that Laurel and Hardy would have been proud of. Which is probably why, with the exception of Conway and Knotts, the entire cast was jettisoned for 1979’s The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.