During the opening and closing credits, Dusty Walker sings "The Tale of Vermillion O'Toole", with differing lyrics at the beginning and end. The lyrics at the beginning make it sound like she's rather naughty, but the point of the film is that she has been unjustly labeled as such. She claims she was unjustly arrested for illegal activities perpetrated by her boyfriend, while she was a dancer in his saloon.
Early on, we see Mae(Ann Sheridan) smash the window of the restroom in the train car in which she is being transported to trial. She squeezes herself out (ouch, that jagged glass remaining!), and tumbles down a slope, unharmed! Cole, her ex-boyfriend, also being transported, knocks out the marshal, unlocks his handcuffs, and pushes him off the train! When she arrives at a train depot, Mae changes her name to Vermillion O'Tool and buys a ticket for a little town in the mountains called Timberline. There she meets Rose: the proprietor of an upscale saloon called the Opera House. She gets a job with Rose as her lead dancing girl. Soon, 3 tikes manage to run into the saloon and see Vermillion performing a song and dance. They immediately take a liking to what they see, and inquire if she would like to be their mother, since their real mother is deceased and their father is away all week, logging. She declines making a commitment, but agrees to walk home with them. Their father, Will Hall, is shocked to find a strange woman in his house cooking for his kids. At first, he says she can't stay as his maid, because he can't afford a maid. But, after she saves the boys from a bear, he relents: a maid with no pay except room and board. Meanwhile, Cole and the marshal separately have traced her to this town, Cole tries to convince her to go with him, but she won't. Rose tries to cover for her with the marshal.
Vermillion soon decides that Will was unlike any man she had ever met. Aside from his logging job, he was a preacher to an open air congregation on Sundays, and had a ready made family for her to mother. Initially, most of the locals considered her a trashy tramp, especially inappropriate for a preacher's wife. But, Will was persistent that she appeared to be basically a good and talented person, who just needed a chance to prove herself. Her chance came when she joined the committee for raising funds to build a church. She suggested they could make more money by putting on an open air show. She uncovered useful hidden talents from many of the villagers, that just needed sprucing up. Unfortunately, their piano player got mad and left. So, Vermillion called upon Rose to bring her talent to bear. Meanwhile, her ex-boyfriend, Cole, and the marshal show up separately, and tangle. While the play is going on, the marshal takes several shots at Cole, climbing up the cliff behind the stage. These shots nearly coincide with shots that the villain in the play is supposed to take: almost, but not quite, leading to bewilderment where they came from. Incidentally, the name of the play is "Take Me to Town". I will leave the remainder of the screenplay for you to see.
Clearly, the take home message is that generalizations about the character of people in various social strata don't necessarily apply in individual cases. Most women in the entertainment business want to eventually settle down and have a family. In these respects, the screenplay is a bit preachy at times, but what can you expect when you have a minister and a woman ready to reform her life as the lead characters. The film also has some continuity, contrivances, and reality problems, but its combination of drama, humor, and charm compensates for these deficiencies.
Ann Sheridan, Sterling Hayden, and Phillip Reed are fine in the main character roles in this comedic drama. Lee Patrick clearly was quite a character in general, and made a charismatic saloon manager as Rose. She's especially memorable as the cheroot-smoking piano player, wearing a fancy female outfit, but topped with a man's bowler hat, strongly cocked to one side. She was the antithesis of what Vermillion hoped to become, but they still identified with each other.
Shot in color, it's available at YouTube
Early on, we see Mae(Ann Sheridan) smash the window of the restroom in the train car in which she is being transported to trial. She squeezes herself out (ouch, that jagged glass remaining!), and tumbles down a slope, unharmed! Cole, her ex-boyfriend, also being transported, knocks out the marshal, unlocks his handcuffs, and pushes him off the train! When she arrives at a train depot, Mae changes her name to Vermillion O'Tool and buys a ticket for a little town in the mountains called Timberline. There she meets Rose: the proprietor of an upscale saloon called the Opera House. She gets a job with Rose as her lead dancing girl. Soon, 3 tikes manage to run into the saloon and see Vermillion performing a song and dance. They immediately take a liking to what they see, and inquire if she would like to be their mother, since their real mother is deceased and their father is away all week, logging. She declines making a commitment, but agrees to walk home with them. Their father, Will Hall, is shocked to find a strange woman in his house cooking for his kids. At first, he says she can't stay as his maid, because he can't afford a maid. But, after she saves the boys from a bear, he relents: a maid with no pay except room and board. Meanwhile, Cole and the marshal separately have traced her to this town, Cole tries to convince her to go with him, but she won't. Rose tries to cover for her with the marshal.
Vermillion soon decides that Will was unlike any man she had ever met. Aside from his logging job, he was a preacher to an open air congregation on Sundays, and had a ready made family for her to mother. Initially, most of the locals considered her a trashy tramp, especially inappropriate for a preacher's wife. But, Will was persistent that she appeared to be basically a good and talented person, who just needed a chance to prove herself. Her chance came when she joined the committee for raising funds to build a church. She suggested they could make more money by putting on an open air show. She uncovered useful hidden talents from many of the villagers, that just needed sprucing up. Unfortunately, their piano player got mad and left. So, Vermillion called upon Rose to bring her talent to bear. Meanwhile, her ex-boyfriend, Cole, and the marshal show up separately, and tangle. While the play is going on, the marshal takes several shots at Cole, climbing up the cliff behind the stage. These shots nearly coincide with shots that the villain in the play is supposed to take: almost, but not quite, leading to bewilderment where they came from. Incidentally, the name of the play is "Take Me to Town". I will leave the remainder of the screenplay for you to see.
Clearly, the take home message is that generalizations about the character of people in various social strata don't necessarily apply in individual cases. Most women in the entertainment business want to eventually settle down and have a family. In these respects, the screenplay is a bit preachy at times, but what can you expect when you have a minister and a woman ready to reform her life as the lead characters. The film also has some continuity, contrivances, and reality problems, but its combination of drama, humor, and charm compensates for these deficiencies.
Ann Sheridan, Sterling Hayden, and Phillip Reed are fine in the main character roles in this comedic drama. Lee Patrick clearly was quite a character in general, and made a charismatic saloon manager as Rose. She's especially memorable as the cheroot-smoking piano player, wearing a fancy female outfit, but topped with a man's bowler hat, strongly cocked to one side. She was the antithesis of what Vermillion hoped to become, but they still identified with each other.
Shot in color, it's available at YouTube