Ride, Vaquero!

Tomorrow's (Aug. 4) star in TCM's Summer Under the Stars is Howard Keel, and his day kicks off with one of those movies whose titles I'd seen show up on TCM several times over the years, what with the movie having been made at MGM, but never actually watched until the last time it showed up on TCM and I recorded it. That movie is Ride, Vaquero!, at 6:00 AM.

Howard Keel is technically not the star here, as we don't see him for several minutes and the bigger role goes to Robert Taylor. Taylor plays Rio Cameron, a man in South Texas not long after the Civil War who works for José Esqueda (Anthony Quinn) and is José's foster brother: it's mentioned later in the film that Rio was orphaned and raised by José's mom alongside José. Esqueda is the leader of a group of disaffected people who are probably old enough to remember the days of the Texas Republic, and possibly even when Texas was still part of Mexico. Esqueda expects a lot more Anglos to come pouring into this part of Texas, and worries what it will mean for their lands.

One such person is King Cameron (Howard Keel). He's recently gotten married to Cordelia (Ava Gardner), and plans on making a new life for the two of them as a rancher in the Rio Grande valley. He's even spent the money he's saved up on the land and, one presumes, a bunch of cattle. But on the way to their new home, he and Cordelia see smoke on the horizon. That smoke is from the small house he had built on the land before getting Cordelia, and King has no illusions about who's responsible for the fire.

So King goes into town in order to organize the Anglos into finally bringing some law to the area. Oh, there's a sheriff, all right, but he's not able to do much so the rest of the time it's up to the cavalry to save the day, as is going to happen multiple times over the course of the movie. Esqueda and Rio show up to the meeting, so everybody of importance in the movie knows what's up. The one person who wants all the violence to stop is the local priest, Fr. Antonio (Kurt Kasznar).

Cameron rebuilds, only for all his hired help to flee the place -- they know that Esqueda is going to burn them out again, and again, as long as it takes for the Anglos to get the message that they're not welcome. Rio is caught in the middle, and when Cameron catches Rio after a raid gone wrong, Rio actually starts working briefly for Cameron. Complicating matters is the fact that Cordelia finds herself falling in love with Cameron. There's more violence to come, as well as a showdown between Rio and José when Esqueda decides to raid Brownsville.

Ride, Vaquero! is a competently-made movie, but I think there are good reasons why it's not so well known compared to other classic westerns. In my opinion a lot of that has to do with the time when it was released, in 1953. There's nothing groundbreaking in Ride, Vaquero!, and other westerns, like the Anthony Mann/James Stewart collaborations or Budd Boetticher's stuff, were beginning to show a darker psychological edge to their heroes. Worse for Ride, Vaquero! is that came out two months before The Robe, the first movie released in the new wide-screen Cinemascope format. Being in the old Academy ratio makes Ride, Vaquero! look even more dated and lacking in vista.

Ride, Vaquero! is entertaining enough, and that's not a bad thing. But there is better, and more spectacular, out there.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

I've mentioned before that musicals aren't my favorite genre of movies, in part because they're even more artificial than other movies in that nobody just breaks out into song like that in real life. Never mind that I don't always care for the voices of the singers. So I have to admit that as a result I've put off watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for a while. It was on TCM last month, and is on again tomorrow, January 16, at 6:00 PM, so I've finally gotten around to watching it to do a full-length review.

A title card just after the opening credits informs us that the action is set in the Oregon Territory, 1850. Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel) is a farmer out in the backwoods who has come into town in part because he's in want of a wife. Outside one of those hotel/restaurants you see in old westerns, he meets Milly (Jane Powell). Seeing the way she can handle the rough men who pass through town, he realizes she can handle life on a farm, and so almost immediately proposes to her. This is a rather shocking idea, but back in those days it wasn't as if there was much way for men and women to meet, so she takes him up on the marriage proposal.

It's only when the two of them get back to the farm that Adam informs Milly that he's got six brothers, all of whom work the farm with him. Amazingly, none of the brothers gets jealous and tries to do anything inappropriate with Milly, at least not in the way you'd think of men doing in a place where there's only one woman around. But they are uncouth, not having had the civilizing presence of a woman around, and poor Milly has to try to civilize them.

The brothers go to a barn raising, which is an excuse for the big dance number in the film and the number that everybody remembers with good reason. More importantly, however, its a chance for the brothers to be around women, and for them to cotton on to the idea that they need wives as well. However, they come up with a rather dumb way of trying to find themselves wives. As winter is setting in, they go into town and look for the women they met at the dance... and basically kidnap the women to bring them back to the farm for a marriage ceremony. And they set off an avalanche on the way back so that the women's angry fathers and brothers won't be able to follow them until spring, which will give the women time to accept the situation and fall in love with the brothers the way Milly has fallen in love with Adam. The only thing is, they don't have anyone to perform the wedding, and there's no way the brides are going to consummate a non-marriage relationship. Never mind what the Production Code says. Adam is disgusted with this behavior and goes to a trapping cabin to spend the winter, even though Milly is now pregnant with his child.

Of course, there is that pesky Production Code, so we know that in the end everything is going to be made right. The fact that Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is also supposed to be a light musical also requires the sort of happy ending that we're going to get once spring comes and the brides' families come for the brothers.

Fans of musicals will love Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, although most of those will probably already have seen the movie. I didn't dislike it, although I have to say that I'm still generally more of a fan of backstage musicals about putting on a show like 42nd Street or Gold Diggers of 1933 or biographical musicals since songs and dance numbers tend to make more sense there. It's easy to see why Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has such high critical praise.

Reassessing Calamity Jane

I've mentioned before that one of my earliest classic film memories involved the whole family getting together and watching the Doris Day movie Calamity Jane. Both my grandfather and one of my uncles were involved in the movie theater business as managers and projectionists, which meant that my uncle had somehow gotten access to a bunch of prints (I suspect that some of them may have been bootlegs, too, by the VCR days). So they would show movies from time to time on a homemade screen, and Calamity Jane was the one I remember not being my type of movie. Anyhow, it was on TCM earlier this week as part of 31 Days of Oscar, and will be on again tomorrow (April 3) at 4:00 PM as part of a centenary salute to Day. So I recorded it and watched it not only to do a review for tomorrow's showing, but also to give the movie a second chance.

I noticed right from the opening credits why a boy of about five or six, as I would have been for that showing, would be turned off by the movie. The opening credits, segueing into the first scene, are a musical number set on a stagecoach; if you're not a fan of something like "The Trolley Song" from Meet Me in St. Louis (and I'm not), you're not going to care for this musical number either. That stagecoach is coming in to Deadwood in the Dakota Territory (now South Dakota), where "Calamity" Jane Canary lives, making a living riding shotgun on the stages.

Calam, as she's sometimes called, is in many ways one of the boys, wearing outdated buckskin outfits while being a sharpshooter, and taking in a phony homespun way with a really bad accent that makes you wonder whether people really talked like this. Jane has a platonic male friend in Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel), but another man she's really interested in romantically, Lt. Gilmartin (Philip Carey) stationed at the fort nearby. Jane has saved Lt. Gilmartin from the Sioux on multiple occasions, but because of Jane's manliness in saving him, Gilmartin doesn't realize that she really loves him.

In town is a saloon that has a nightclub-type stage, where manager Henry Miller (Paul Harvey) has announced the coming attraction of Chicago actress Francis Fryer. Unfortunately for him, Francis is a man (Dick Wesson), and Henry, knowing his audience will riot, forces Francis to dress as a woman and do a number. Meanwhile, one of the audience members has a photo of actress Adelaid Adams, currently performing in Chicago, who is obviously more beautiful than Francis. After the audience does in fact riot, Jane promises she can get Adelaid from Chicago to perform in Deadwood.

In a terribly unfunny scene, Jane is shown to be tremendously ignorant when she gets to Chicago, not understanding the big city at all. She gets to Adelaid's dressing room after the show just after Adelaid has told her dresser Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie) she's going back to Europe, but leaving Katie several of her outfits. So when Jane gets to the dressing room she's talking to Katie but thinking she's talking to Adelaid. Katie is happy to keep up the illusion, because it will give her a chance to perform, which she's always wanted. And she looks close enough to Adelaid that perhaps the audience won't notice.

Katie and Jane eventually become good friends, living in a cabin Jane has in the woods but that she hasn't normally used. Katie helps Jane freshen up the cabin, becoming more of a woman in the process, and one who might steal men's hearts. In fact, it's time for the men and women to pair up, as the fort is going to hold its annual ball. Gilmartin and Wild Bill would both like to take Katie to the ball, with Gilmartin winning the luck of the draw. This makes Jane unhappy, as well as Wild Bill's guest. Jane gets even more pissed when she finds that Gilmartin is thinking of marrying Katie. But since the movie is going to have a happy ending, we know that Jane and Wild Bill are in fact a perfect match.

Watching Calamity Jane again as an adult for the first time in decades, it's easy to see why some people wouldn't like this. Doris Day, having to put on the accent and talk in a contrived way, is served poorly by the script. This is especially true in the Chicago scene that insults Jane's (and our) intelligence. Also, if you're not a fan of the artifical musical numbers that filled musicals like this during the Studio Era, it's going to be tough to warm to Calamity Jane.

But, at the same time, I can see why some people are really going to enjoy Calamity Jane. Everybody does a professional job with the material they're given, and some of the comedy does work, most notably the scene poor Dick Wesson has to do in drag. The Technicolor is also quite vibrant in the print TCM ran. And if you like other studio-era musicals, you'll probably like Calamity Jane too.

Kiss Me Kate

Tomorrow morning and afternoon, TCM is running a bunch of Shakespeare-themed movies. I'd never done a review of Kiss Me Kate before, so the last time it showed up on TCM, I recorded it with a view to getting around to watching it sometime. Seeing it on the schedule speeded up that process, so now you're getting the review.

Howard Keel plays Fred Graham, a Broadway star who is talking with his good friend Cole Porter (Ron Randell) about his latest project. Cole has written a musical treatment of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, and Fred would be perfect for the male lead Petruchio. They know who would be perfect for the role of Kate, actress Lilli Vanessi (Kathryn Grayson). There's just one catch: Lilli is Fred's ex-wife. And Fred is pursuing another woman now, dancer Lois Lane (Ann Miller), although she's got a boyfriend in Bill Calhoun (Tommy Rall).

After some persuading (and a spectacular if meaningless to the plot dance number by Miller), Lilli agrees to take on the role, and the play is a go. At this point, a substantial portion of the movie becomes the performance of the musical version of the play, although some of the backstage stuff is going to come into play.

Lois and Bill ahve both been cast in the play too, as Bianca and Lucentio respectively, if you know the original Shakespeare play, which I have to admit I don't know that much about. That's no big deal, except that Bill likes to gamble and has racked up a substantial amount of gambling debt. Worse, he forged Fred's name on an IOU to the gangsters.

The gangster, however, sends some henchmen who don't know what the guy who signed the IOU looked like, or else they'd find Fred and realize that Fred isn't the one who racked up those debts. Instead, the henchmen, Lippy and Slug (Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore respectively), simply expect Fred to pay up. At least Fred has the good sense to realize that he has a hit on his hands and try to wait for the box office to come in long enough to pay off the IOU.

But here there's a big catch: Lilli got a bouquet of flowers from Fred, whch she thought was part of an attempt to make up. But it was a mistake: the flowers were meant for Lois. When Lilli sees the card addressed to Lois, she threatens to quit the show then and there, like literally between acts of the performance. This would obviously be a disaster for Fred, and leads to the film's funnier moments of Lippy and Slug being dressed up in Shakespearean garb and going on stage to watch Lilli and make certain she doesn't bolt.

Kiss Me Kate has a lot of potential. Whether you like it, however, is going to come down to whether you like the singing and the dancing. For me, that was a bit of a problem, as neither Howard Keel nor Kathryn Grayson are my favorite singers. Not that they can't sing; they're more than proficient enough. It's just a style that I don't think holds up so well today. The dancing, unsurprisingly, is quite good, thanks not just to Miller, but Rall and also a young Bob Fosse as two of Miller's suitors in the stage version of the show.

Kiss Me Kate wouldn't be my first choice when thinking about any of the stars, or for Cole Porter musicals, but there are definitely going to be people who like it a lot.