1h 17min | Comedy, Western | 27 May 1949
Director: Preston Sturges
Stars: Betty Grable, Cesar Romero, Rudy Vallee.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041165/
bootleg, blurry copy.
Hideous non-musical. I must have thought: BG & PS, what's not to like? Well, it's all about people shooting guns at each other for as little reason as possible, and it's supposed to be funny.
Given my 2018 filter of mass killings aplenty in the land, this is just not funny. BG is shown being trained as a child to be an expert shot, but as an adult, she only hits the ass of the town judge (3 separate times) sometimes because a person is wrestling her for the gun, and the swaying ropes hanging 2 of her "friends" (who fortunately didn't break their necks or windpipes when shoved out the window to hang). But when there's an all-out OK-Corral style shootout, she doesn't hit anything. I didn't watch carefully, but I didn't see anyone stop to reload their 6-shooters.
It's an unpleasant story about unsavory people, and only 2 songs, no dancing. Maybe it's a 4. IMDb rating is a normal-range 6.2.
Was this really funny in '49? How about war vets; did they like to HEAR all these bullets flying? Or maybe these sounds aren't like the real thing.
Preston Sturges gets writing and directing credit here. I'm ready to conclude that I do NOT like him in general, just in 3 specific cases.
Fox, dir. Sturges; 4
