2/10
Hal Roach - King of the "D" Feature
11 July 2018
In the 1940's Hal Roach Sr was famous for producing the Laurel & Hardy and Our Gang comedy shorts, began producing a string of features and "streamliners. Most of these films are jaw-droppingly bad and done with so little imagination or skill to make Roach something of a forerunner to Ed Wood, albeit a family friendly filmmaker. In the 1940's he began producing mini-western comedies starring Will Rogers' son Jimmy and Wallace Beery's nephew Noah Jr. Noah clearly had comic talent although it took his career some 30 years to recover from these fiascos before he hit his stride costarring with James Garner in THE ROCKFORD FILES. Jimmy Rogers, like director Hal Roach Jr., appears to have none (and judging by his 1940's features any papa Roach had had evaporated at this point.)

This lame little comedy with no laughs has the boys as earthy Montana cowboys out west briefly proving their worth with the local cowboys only to have Noah to be sidelined by a "girl dude" (in case you didn't know it, "dudes" here refers to the city slickers who vacation at the local dude ranches with their glamorous western outfits that are more country-western star than bona fide cowboy. The girl in question is played by Marjorie Woodworth, a pretty if unmemorable blonde who also had a brief career as a Roach leading lady (Hal Roach brazenly tried to hype this girl as the new Jean Harlow although she's more a Ginger Rogers type.) So this faux Harlow is teamed with Wallace Beery's nephew are they are no Kitty & Dan Packard that's for sure.

The movie goes nowhere but it's over in under 50 minutes (!!) so you won't waste too much time on it. The few well-known players among the supporting cast are character actress Marjorie Gateson, famed for playing snooty society women, here cast as Woodworth's aunt and totally wasted but she has more to do than poor Grady Sutton who incredibly has only one line of perhaps four words and is no more than an extra in two other scenes, one of which he is only briefly spotted among the many at the dinner table.
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