Well Deserved Praise

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This movie starts off pretty good. George O'Brien and Edgar Kennedy are working at a dude ranch to raise money so they can work their gold mine. The have enough... but Evalyn Bostock shows up and George is smitten; she is annoyed at his presumption, but every attempt to take him down a peg results in his being warm, masculine and masterful. While George is trying to make hay, news comes that the mine is a bonanza --but the telegram is read by con man Stephen Chase, who is trying to marry Evalyn for her money. He offers to pay Edgar $25,000 for their mine, which Edgar accepts, except they have to go to England for plot convenience.The first half of the movie is good, with some nice humor on display, thanks to director Eddie Cline, O'Brien's casual charm and Kennedy's patented slow burn. The last fifteen minutes, however, is all about rear projection shots of London and the inevitable fight between O'Brien and Chase and is pretty much standard.O'Brien was getting tired of being a western star. The following year, he would cut a deal with George Hirliman that would get him off a horse -- still in action movies that would require him to take off his shirt. That wouldn't last long. Eventually, RKO would buy his contract and put him back in the saddle.

Any B western with George O'Brien is worth watching. He had the charisma, underlying sense of humor, good looks and athleticism that made him a joy to see perform and always entertaining. In this western, Bob (O'Brien) and his sidekick Persimmon (Kennedy) take a job at a luxury dude ranch in order to earn enough money to continue to continue working on their mining claim. Part of their duties are to greet incoming visitors at the train station and then take them to the ranch in a stagecoach. Along the way, they stage a mock holdup in order to evidently give visitors a thrill and a taste of the old West. In this case, the passengers are an English mother and her daughter Pamela (Bostok) and a smarmy hanger on manager. When the prank is revealed, the mother is amused, the manager livid and the daughter is insulted and in quite a snit. The two plot lines are the one-oneupmanship game played between Pamela and Bob and a con man trying to cheat Persimmon and Bob out of their valuable mining claim. Understandably, the con man works only with Persimmon who is naive and gullible. Bob becomes smitten with Pamela, but, still in a snit, she flits back to England. Bob pursues her there and they join forces in trying to catch the con man. O'Brien and Bostok work very well together and she holds her own in the acting and charisma even if she loses the one-oneupmanship battle. Edgar Kennedy is, well, the familiar Edgar Kennedy but this time in a Western. He is funny and one of the more entertaining obligatory sidekicks. Very enjoyable B Western.

Yet another novelty Western from the mid 1930s, this time with George O'Brien on location in merry England. Bob Walker (O'Brien) is employed as a "stage coach robber" - an entertainment designed to introduce visitors to the real West. He and his pal, "Persimmon", (Arthur Kennedy) are only waiting to save enough money so they can start up their gold mine. The movie descends to a battle of the sexes with Bob trying to woo snooty English girl Doris (played by a very snooty Evalyn Bostock who didn't make much of a splash in the movies) with displays of riding, tennis and swimming. But Doris is wealthy and one person who is not happy about things is Thornton, her other admirer. He is the "most wanted con man in the world" and is busy cooking up a scheme by offering the boys $20,000 for their gold mine when in reality it is worth millions. When the guests leave - Doris has learned about Bob's $20 bet (to do with whether he can ask her out before she leaves), Thornton is hoping to marry Doris but he hasn't reckoned with Bob who follows them half way across the world.The most interesting part of the movie is the last 10 minutes when Bob, like a fish out of water and complete with cowboy hat, wanders around London trying to find Persimmon before he signs the mine away. Oddly enough it is in London that he finds the most fighting action.

It's not unusual that this old Western doesn't have any other reviews as I write this. It's a 1935 oater starring George O'Brien you'll find in a neat collection of two hundred fifty films from Mill Creek Entertainment, and probably nowhere else. As formulaic as these programmers could be, this one has more than a few elements that make it not only interesting, but entertaining as well.Owners of a still unworked gold mine, Bob Walker (O'Brien) and partner Persimmon Bates (Edgar Kennedy) hire out for a hotel owner greeting rich tourists by stagecoach and performing an all purpose hold-up to get folks into the spirit of the Old West. This time around it's an English socialite traveling with her mother and business manager Hadley Thornton (Alden Chase). Failing to make a good first impression on Pamela Barclay (Evalyn Bostock), Walker spends the rest of the picture trying to repair the damage and win over the English beauty.I must say, it was unusual to see Edgar Kennedy in this flick, the first time I've seen him in a Western, and it was a treat. He brings the same mannerisms to his role here that he did in repeated team-ups of the era with Laurel and Hardy. In fact, you'll hear one of those familiar L&H tunes in the early going when Pamela arrives at the hotel minus one shoe. That was a cool touch.For his part, it looks like O'Brien has a routine worked out with his horse 'Mike', playing the runaway when Miss Barclay tries teaching him a lesson for the opening stagecoach gambit. If Mike had a better agent, he might have been listed in the credits the way Trigger and Champion used to be, but this was an earlier era.The greatest departure this picture takes from your standard horse opera is when they take the action all the way to London to close out the attempted mine swindle. In the process, Walker chases down Miss Barclay and makes the save when she's hijacked by one of Thornton's henchmen. I can't imagine how they could afford to film this on location in London just to round out that portion of the story. But it certainly works, and it's definitely different to see the hero dodging city traffic instead of bullets. One thing that's not different though is the way the picture winds up. The cowboy hero gets the girl, and closes out the show with a big smooch for your typical happy ending.