(140 mins.) Released 1929-09-06
Director: Luther Reed
Stars: Bebe Daniels, John Boles, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey
musical, romance, western
originally posted 22 Sep 2017 23:19
Sigh. Duped again by high IMDb ratings. (Who ARE these US women aged 45+ who give this a 10!?)
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An early musical western: Gene Autry's first feature is 1934, Roy Rogers' is 1935.
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Star John Boles is very handsome, and can sing, but I'm more eager to see him smile than to hear him. He goes on to make at least 3 musicals with Shirley Temple, and is Stella Dallas' husband. Oddly, the wanted suspect could be Boles' twin, but I know Boles well enough to tell the difference.
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Costar Bebe Daniels face doesn't register with me, meaning I'm not sure if that's her or another character in this stinker. They're all brunettes with fingerwave hairdos. Bebe plays the star replaced by Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street (1933), and her career ends with that decade. She did a lot of silent work.
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I probably also wanted to see the famed comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey, but I knew not to buy more of their flicks once I'd seen them. They get a lot of screen time here, with a marriage subplot and dancing numbers for Wheeler and frequent female foil Dorothy Lee.
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The timeframe of this movie is very confusing. It's in a border town, and we see lots of horses, a motorcycle, but no cars. The dresses look contemporary to 1929. The evening gowns are beautiful and the hotel stage/ballroom is lovely.
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The dancing is filmed badly: typical cut them off at the ankles, OR show only below the knee. We get an overhead shot of women making a 5-spoke obstacle for the comic dancer.
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This print includes a long 2-strip Technicolor scene, showing its age. So the last 30 minutes is a blur of red and green. (OMG, this was 30 minutes longer, but footage has been lost.)
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IMDb trivia says this was a the first big hit for RKO. Well, the stock market crash is 6 weeks away.
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RKO, dir. Reed; 5-
(It's really tempting to fling these 5's into a dumpster. Maybe an eBay listing is in their future.)
