Reviews

This relatively short (45 minute) adventure offers a fairly standard plot: White-hat-wearing good guy Utah Neyes (Russell Hayden) searches for his missing friend and partner and in the process battles fur thieves led by black-hat-wearing head honcho Nails Nelson (Douglas Fowley). After getting crossways with a credulous but honest Mountie (Lyle Talbot), Utah wins the day and gets the pretty girl (Inez Cooper). Clearly made with a low budget, the action is entertaining enough, with the necessary fistfights, shootouts and last-second life savings.

The chief attraction is the presence of the very likeable leads, Hayden and Cooper, whose chemistry works well with each other while avoiding any saccharine moments. Hayden is probably best known as sidekick Lucky Jenkins in 27 Hopalong Cassidy films. Cooper had a short career, but she is lovely and plays the tough frontier woman well.

Paramount has produced a neat little gem of a "B" western, worth seeing if only for a truly impressive cast, including two Oscar winners (Broderick Crawford and Anthony Quinn) and two other Oscar nominees (May Robson and Akim Tamiroff). Add in a virtual who's who of character actors including three walk-of-fame stars (Ellen Drew, John Howard and Monte Blue), Charley Grapewin (The Wizard of Oz), and Eddie Foy, Jr. (Yankee Doodle Dandy) among others, and you have lots to watch for in a relatively short picture.

Filmed on location in Arizona and set in the contemporary (for 1940) West, the usual elements of a cowboy adventure all appear: cattle rustlers and their ruthless leader, the beautiful rancher's daughter, the dominating landowner (this time, a formidable May Robson), an undercover lawman, the dishonest townsman, and a climactic shootout. And the hero gets the girl, naturally. An unusual ranch house/castle/fortress originally built to withstand Indian attack has an old dark house feel. The only real wrinkle is seeing the Texas Rangers in a modern office building, using motor vehicles (sometimes) and communicating by radio.

Well worth spending just over an hour for an afternoon's entertainment.

After Jack Smith (Neil Hamilton) and his wife (Miriam Jordan) divorce, she completes her legal education, and they oppose each other in a courtroom in a case involving damages over an annulment forced by a meddling mother-in-law. The case itself reflects the root cause of their own divorce (a meddling mother-in-law). Whether love wins over the "battle axe" dowagers in either case is the basis for the plot of this little comedy.

In some ways this film is a precursor to "Adam's Rib," but Hamilton and Jordan, of course, can't rival Tracey and Hepburn. Even so, there are some notable features making a viewing worthwhile. First, Jordan does a pretty good job of portraying a competent, self-assured and successful layer at a time when women attorneys were rare. Second, she also makes a worthwhile and (relevant to our own times), albeit brief, statement about the credentials as a true American of the son of the immigrant businessman Henry Populopulini (played fabulously by Henry Armetta, who stole every scene he was in). Third, the film offers a case study about attitudes toward marriage, in-laws, and class consciousness in 1934.

Although stagy, with a somewhat abrupt and unsatisfying ending, we can be grateful to the Library of Congress for restoring this film.