Honky Tonk

Another movie I recorded during Summer Under the Stars that's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive is Honky Tonk.

A prologue of sorts introduces us to "Candy" Johnson (Clark Gable). He's a con man working the old west with his best friend "Sniper" (Chill Wills). The latest town has finally cottoned on to their schemes, and are about to tar and feather the two men and run them out of town on a rail. Somehow, however, they're still stupid enough to let Candy talk his way out of the situation. So Candy and Sniper head off to the next town, with Candy claiming he's going to go straight. Yeah right.

On the train to their next destination, Candy meets the lovely Elizabeth Cotton (Lana Turner). She's grown up in Boston, and is coming out west to the town of Yellow Creek, NV, to meet her father the Judge (Frank Morgan) who is a justice of the peace in the town. Candy, liking her, decides that this is probably a good place to settle down. When they get off the train, he meets the judge, and realizes that this guy is an old friend of his, a fellow con artist who is taking kickbacks. But the judge wants better for his daughter. He knows that Candy is no good for her, even though the judge is still willing to consider Candy a friend.

Sure enough, Candy isn't able to stay on the straight and narrow, winning a casino pretty much right away by committing a con in a game of Russian Roulette. This leads to bigger and better things, with Candy basically becoming boss of a booming town, with Brazos (Albert Dekker) as his sheriff enforcer. Meanwhile, an old flame of Candy's, "Gold Dust" (Claire Trevor) shows up to warn Elizabeth about marrying Candy, but Elizabeth wants a good life, so she tricks Candy into marrying her.

Eventually, the Judge has pangs of conscience, and he starts dealing with the good government types, led by the widow of the former town preacher, Mrs. Varner (Marjorie Main) to turn the tables on Candy and the rest of the corruption going on in Yellow Creek. But Brazos and his men in particular aren't about to let that happen.

Honky Tonk is a movie that came across to me as something more than a programmer, but not quite a prestige movie. It felt to me much as though there was no new ground being broken here, but just MGM putting a movie into production to give audiences something from their stars that would entertain the audience. There's nothing wrong with that as not every movie can be a masterpiece. And certainly, Honky Tonk entertains. It's just that as I was watching I couldn't help but feel like I'd seen all these plot lines before, even though I'd never actually seen Honky Tonk.

So, if you want undemanding, solid entertainment, I can certainly recommend Honky Tonk. The studios certainly knew how to produce such entertainment back in the day.