Cinevent Past Notes: GO WEST YOUNG LADY (1941)

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Richard M Roberts
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Cinevent Past Notes: GO WEST YOUNG LADY (1941)

Postby Richard M Roberts » Sat Sep 21, 2013 5:25 am

There’s no way you can go wrong with this one, look at that cast: Glenn Ford in one of his earliest starring roles (he looks about twelve), Penny Singleton in one of her last roles that wasn’t Blondie or Jane Jetson. Ann Miller!!!!!! Comedy relief from Charlie Ruggles and Allan Jenkins (who does a song and dance with Ann Miller. Really! No Kidding!). Music from Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys and The Foursome (featuring future Spike Jones vocalist Del Porter). This movie is friggin’ fun folks, a cute little western comedy-musical that gets you through seventy minutes darn entertainingly.

Story-wise, it’s another retread of DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (with perhaps a soupcon of THE PALEFACE thrown in, and that film hadn’t even been made at the time). Glenn Ford is a lawman coming to clean up the town that’s being terrorized by another masked bandito. Also on the stagecoach is Belinda “Bill” Pendergast (Penny Singleton) one of those Wild West Women sent back east to finishing school who can still shoot better than most of the men. She and Ford cross paths and strike sparks, at least when she’s not humiliating him by out-shooting him or hitting him with pies, and they fall in love and fight the bandits—yada-yada, whatever who cares. The point is that you get a musical number about every five minutes or so, pretty much everyone gets one (except Glenn Ford of course), and it’s all tied together at a friendly pace by Director Frank R. Strayer, another unsung journeyman with a twenty-five year career covering some fair Columbia and Paramount silent programmers like THE FATE OF A FLIRT (1925), NOW WE’RE IN THE AIR (1927), and PARTNERS IN CRIME (1928), both Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton comedies, and ROUGHHOUSE ROSIE (1927) with Clara Bow. He then handled some fondly remembered poverty-row horror quickies in the thirties like MEETING AT MIDNIGHT (1931), THE MONSTER WALKS (1932), THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933) with Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, and the underrated little Chesterfield vampire picture CONDEMNED TO LIVE (1935) with Ralph Morgan. Strayer had found a steady gig at Columbia in 1938 when he helmed the first BLONDIE in the Blondie series with Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake and stayed on to direct them into the early forties. A good solid B-director who could bring that little extra to a low budget and handle any type of picture, Frank Strayer deserves a little nod at least.

Though it may have been a smart and steady career move, BLONDIE and its endless series did rob us of more varied roles from Penny Singleton. Born Mariana Dorothy Agnes Leticia McNulty and first working in Vaudeville as a child actor named Penny McNulty, she made her screen debut(as Dorothy McNulty) in a 1930 Paramount short with Frank Morgan called BELLE OF THE NIGHT. Then she wowed audiences with her sizzling renditions of “The Varsity Drag” and “Good News” in the 1930 MGM version of GOOD NEWS, but the statuesque brunette’s screen career just didn’t take off, and she found more fame on the stage, appearing in several incarnations of Ken Murrays Blackouts. Marriage changed her name to Penny Singleton in 1937 and despite a few 1938 supporting roles in films like THE MAD MISS MANTON, HARD TO GET, AND Humphrey Bogart’s least favorite of his films SWING YOUR LADY, her film career didn’t take off until she went blonde and essayed Chic Young’s immortal cartoon character in Columbia’s longest running series, culminating in 28 films from 1938-50. Continuing to work on the stage and television after Blondie went bust, Penny also found late-in-life immortality to another generation as the voice of Jane Jetson in the Hanna-Barbera Cartoon show THE JETSONS. She also became an active Union organizer in the entertainment industry, becoming the first female president of AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists) in 1969. This talented, intelligent, busy woman passed away just a few short years ago, in 2003 at the age of 95.

Ann Miller was already a seasoned veteran at the tender (and finally legal, she had lied about her age when she signed her RKO contract at the really tender age of fourteen) age of eighteen when she made GO WEST YOUNG LADY and she’d already made films with Milton Berle, Frank Capra, Katherine Hepburn, the Marx Brothers, Lucille Ball, and The Three Stooges when she added this to her filmography. She’s fun as the Bad Saloon Girl here and she gets several numbers, including the aforementioned tete a’tete with Allan Jenkins of all folk, in which he manages a twinkled-toed tap or two, and looks like he’s having fun while doing it.

The phrase “they don’t make `em like this anymore” is indeed an old cliché’, and like many old cliché’s it’s damn true, especially regarding films like this one. What studio these days has this much talent just hanging around the place that they could just throw them together and whip up a piece of light entertainment in 18 days or so and run it around your local picture palace for a couple of days, then forget about it, except maybe a run or two on your late-late show when we were kids. Nobody creating lasting art here, but it sure goes down easier than last-years Oscar winners, whatever the hell those were.



RICHARD M ROBERTS

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