Screen legend James Garner has been dead ten years, but by Leon he was trending on the Twitter this weekend.

It started with fans celebrating the anniversary of the premiere of “The Rockford Files” on Friday, and quickly shifted to his other roles, his civil rights activism and what the icon of cool had to say about Ronald Reagan, subject of a recent film hagiography, an actor-turned-politician who was president of the Screen Actor’s Guild while Garner served as vice president.

“Ronnie never had an original thought and we had to tell him what to say.”

As kismet would have it, “Support Your Local Gunfighter” was popping up on assorted streamers and HDNET cable. It’s Western comedy comfort food to some of us who grew up in the ’70s.

So in appreciation of Garner, who talked me into buying my first Mini Cooper — “Looooove my Mini,” he drawled, confirming that yes, a tall Oklahoman like himself could fit in one — the one time I interviewed him (for “The Notebook”), I watched it again.

This 1971 comedy is the slightly inferior but still funny follow-up to 1969’s “Support Your Local Sheriff!” Garner and his director pal Burt Kennedy, best known for these films and a couple of lesser Duke Wayne Westerns (“The War Wagon,” “The Train Robbers”) rounded-up much of the same repertory company for a not-really-a-sequel — “Support Your Local Gunfighter.”

Garner was once again joined by Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Walter Burke, Gene Evans, Willis Bouchey and the comical shrew Kathleen Freeman (“The Blues Brothers”) for an upending of movie and TV Western archetypes and tropes.

Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan and Bruce Dern, as the spitfire love interest, the patriarchal villain and the villain’s problem relative in “Sheriff!” are replaced by Suzanne Pleshette, a year before her “Bob Newhart Show” gig, the owlish harrumpher John Dehner and Ellen Corby a year before she became Grandma on “The Waltons.”

There was a hint of the TV comedy that launched Garner, “Maverick,” in “Support Your Local Sheriff!” Garner, Kennedy and Oscar-nominated Western screenwriter James Edward Grant (“The Sheepman,” “The Alamo” and “The Comancheros”) go all-in on Bret Maverick in all but name this time.

Latigo Smith (Garner) is an unlucky gambler and a gigolo, an overdressed dude in the Western sense of of the word. He travels from town to town, seduces wealthy madams from the local brothels, lets them bury him in gifts and cash, and skedaddles when wedding bells start to chime.

He does this by train. “I don’t ride...A man’s gotta’ be numb on both ends to earn his livin’ sittin’ on a horse. I just don’t like horses.“

We meet him as he’s evading impending nuptials by getting off a train in scenic Purgatory, a mining town where rival mines are racing for “The Mother Lode,” and the mine operators (Harry Morgan and John Dehner) are willing to do most anything in ensure that the other mine doesn’t beat them to the gold.

A telegraph to the notorious gunslinger Swifty Morgan has one and all assuming that this sharp looking fellow with Elvis sideburns and a hefty sidearm is him.

One mine owner’s daughter (Pleshette) takes it on herself to solve this “Swifty” problem (he’s allegedly been hired to shoot or intimidate everybody who works for her Pa’s mine).

“I’m a ROTTEN shot and I’m gettin’ awful tired of missin’ you!”

Then the unlucky gambler loses it all, as he always does, betting on #23 at roulette.

“Care to place a bet, sir?”

“You lookin’ for TROUBLE, mister? Do I LOOK DIMwitted enough to play that game?”

Throwing in with a down-on-his-luck cowpoke, Jug (Elam), Latigo fast-talks the town into believing that slap-happy Jug is the “real” Swifty. And that he can be bribed into switching sides in the mine wars.

That might just work, unless or until the REAL Swifty Morgan (Chuck Connors) shows up.

The running gags include Jug’s general ineptitude with a pistol, and delusions about that, the impatient “Patience,” played by Pleshette, fuming and shooting and determined to get back to “Miss Hunter’s College on the Hudson River New York for young ladies of good family,” and the constant dynamiting in the mines — which jolts smoke and fire and upends every saloon card game, street argument or brothel debate with only a belated “FIRE IN THE HOLE” as warning.

Western “values” flipped on their head include “fair play” and “fair fights” and “genteel” women and hard-drinking gamblers. Loser Latigo always orders “Sasparilla.”

Viewed now, “Support Your Local Gunfighter” reinforces the history lesson tucked into Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” The Golden Age of the Western was fast fading, as even long-running TV series were outliving their “Greatest Generation” audience.

Hollywood was loaded with character actors used to Western wear, Western speak and TV-and-movie Western skills — handling horses, wagons and revolvers, knowing what stunt men and women would be handy for your “Saloon fight!” scene.

The wardrobe was rentable all over town, sets were already standing, in most cases. Colorado’s Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad was still functioning for the opening, closing and third act launching scenes.

And all these character actors were ready and willing to collect a check doing what they do. Before the sentimentality of TV’s “M*A*S*H,” Morgan was a grand bellowing bantam rooster in screen comedies such as these Westerns and “The Flim-Flam Man.” Freeman could screech with the best of them, and just the appearance of the folksy Dub Taylor (the town doc/veterinarian) or the bugeyed, snide and sneering Henry Jones could provoke a chuckle.

Beetle-browned Dehner was the towering successor to John Carradine as the theatrical, bombastic Titan of the Old West type. Watch him poke around his mansion for signs that his competitor (Morgan) has been courting his spinster sister (Corby) again. He leans regally and comically, throws his elbows out imperiously and delivers a giggle as a walking, frowning sight gag.

Connors, star of TV’s “The Rifleman,” danced out of his comfort zone to play a comical, bald-capped villain.

Pleshette, a cool customer in her own right, was rarely as physical and rambunctious as she is in this part, doing her damnedest to outdo Joan Hackett’s take on a similar character in “Sheriff!”

Elam, who was in “HIGH NOON” for Pete’s sake, a Western villain since Hollywood first noticed his lazy eye, utterly reinvented himself with these films, a great comical sidekick too late to fully enjoy the blessings of that gift.

These were pros to a one, from the costumers to the production designers (What Western brothel DOESN’T have scarlet wallpaper in the halls?), and all were in top form in making this comedy from a dying genre look, feel, smell and sound authentic.

The naughtiest language was “ass,” which figures in many a human bottom/jackass joke, the best of them featuring Garner bestride a donkey, loaded with dynamite, as he faces Swifty Morgan.

“You can’t gunfight a man sitting on your ass!”

About the worst thing you can say about this comedy-that-still plays is that low-hanging-fruit humor got a whole lot lower in the fifty years since Garner was at his beady-eyed best and Hollywood revered this genre enough to mock it half to death.

Rating: G, violence, innuendo, mild profanity

Cast: James Garner, Jack Elam, Suzanne Pleshette, Harry Morgan, Kathleen Freeman, Joan Blondell, Dub Taylor, Henry Jones, Chuck Connors, Ellen Corby, Gene Evans, Walter Burke and John Dehner.

Credits: Directed by Burt Kennedy, scripted by James Edward Grant. A United Artist release on Amazon, Tubi, HDNEt, etc.

Running time: 1:31