Two Texas Knights

Steve (Dennis Morgan) and Danny (Jack Carson) are northern boys who end up in Texas. Their car breaks down and then gets stolen...and they are stranded. Fortunately, a combination ranch/night club (??) is nearby and they get jobs. Soon they start trying to woo the same lady...and this is interrupted by some crooks committing a robbery and everything thinks Steve and Danny did it...so they get locked up in jail. So they did what anyone in Hollywood would do...they break out and prove their innocence!

In so many ways, this follow-up film to "Two Guys from Milwaukee" plays like a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road Picture. You have the guys vying for the same lady, you have them get into mischief and you have a lot of singing....but none of it quite as good as Hope- Crosby. Worth seeing, but pretty much in the category of 'Time Passer' for me.

By the way, get a load of the awful rear projection used in the bucking bronco sequence...yecch!

I have been a huge fan of Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson for some time now.Any other fan should really see this movie.It had so many songs and "Music In the land" is great.The supporting cast was great and it was and always will be a highly entertaining musical!

Warner Brothers seem to have made a concerted attempt to groom Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan as their studio's version of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, with Morgan as the Bing-like handsome affable crooner and Carson as the Bob-like egotistical braggart. Although Carson and Morgan display real chemistry together, they simply aren't in Hope and Crosby's league. (Jack Carson's facial moles might be part of the problem.) Typically, Warners musicals lacked the production values of Paramount's splashy 'Road' films -- I can't recall a single truly great Warners musical, except for 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' (plus some later Warners adaptations of musicals that originated on Broadway) -- and the scripts and songs of the Carson/Morgan films are usually far inferior to Hope's and Crosby's material.

'Two Guys from Texas' is likely the best of the Carson/Morgan teamings, and it's a delightful musical comedy ... profiting from an elaborate animation sequence that seems inspired by the animation in MGM's 'Anchors Aweigh'. Dennis and Jack play a couple of vaudevillains who are motoring through Texas. Dennis sings a tune about tumbleweeds in front of some bad rear-projection. They run afoul of some hold-up men and land up at a dude ranch where they attract the attention of two young ladies: pretty Dorothy Malone (very sexy in a Dorothy Lamour wig), who fancies handsome Dennis, and the rather less pretty Penny Edwards, who fancies Jack. Apparently unaware of his facial moles, Jack wonders why he isn't as successful with the fair sex as Dennis, and this leads him to consult a local doctor (splendidly played by veteran character actor Fred Clark). The wind-up gag involving Clark's character is hilarious.

Jack Carson's character is lumbered with a ridiculous handicap -- he's afraid of animals: ALL animals -- and some unfortunate dialogue, even telling the doctor that sometimes he wishes he was a girl. Hmm...

The script is largely by I.A.L. Diamond (best known for his Billy Wilder collaborations) and Allen Boretz of 'Room Service' fame. I laughed at one very clever dialogue scene on a cutaway set. Carson and Morgan have checked into the dude ranch and are sharing one room, while the two women are in the room next door over with a partition between. The men are conversing in one room while the women are talking in the other, but the two conversations interleave so that the dialogue takes on an entirely new meaning. Ingenious and hilarious! Less impressive is the torch song "Hankerin'".

The best song here (by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne) is a comic duet for the two men, 'I Wanna Be a Cowboy in the Movies', but the song that gets the most attention is Morgan's romantic ballad 'Ev'ry Day I Love You Just a Little Bit More'. This is reprised in the animation sequence, done in standard Warners toon style by Fritz Freleng of the Termite Terrace gang. We see a cartoon version of Dennis Morgan crooning to some swooning she-sheep in bobby socks and saddle shoes, while a cartoon version of Jack Carson gets some advice on sexual politics from Bugs Bunny before he's chased by a large ugly Red Indian woman. This is a reprise of an unfunny running gag from the live-action scenes, in which Carson is pursued by Lilly Christine as the unattractive Red Indian who speaks Spanish. ('Oye, muy bonita!') For some reason, the cartoon versions of Morgan and Carson in this sequence don't look nearly as good as the cartoon versions of other showbiz figures in 'What's Up, Doc?' and other Warners toons.

'Two Guys from Texas' is deftly directed by David Butler, formerly a handsome silent-screen actor who found his true metier behind the camera, but whose directorial career is woefully underrated. I'll rate this very enjoyable froth 8 out of 10. I wish that the other Carson/Morgan teamings were nearly as good as this one.

Taking their "Bob Hope and Bing Crosby" act from Rhode Island to California, crooner Dennis Morgan (as Steve Carroll) and partner Jack Carson (as Danny Foster) run out of gas and are stranded in Texas. The "Two Guys from Texas" (not) stay at a dude ranch owned by beautiful dark-haired Dorothy Malone (as Joan Winston). Both men are attracted to Ms. Malone, but she seems to prefer Mr. Morgan. Adding more romance possibilities are pretty blonde Penny Edwards (as Maggie Reed) and 6'6" tall in his wedgies Forrest Tucker (as "Tex" Bennett)...

An obese Native American woman (as a Fat Indian squaw) follows Mr. Carson around throughout the story; she has a little secret to reveal before the closing credits. In a shorter running joke, Carson has to overcome a fear of animals. The poolside scene gives Malone an opportunity to model her two-piece yellow swimsuit. In a nicely done animated dream sequence, "Bugs Bunny" has a cameo. The intended hit "Every Day I Love You (Just a Little Bit More)" by Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne didn't go far, but the sweetly melodic "Hankerin'" charted for Gordon MacRae.

**** Two Guys from Texas (8/6/48) David Butler ~ Jack Carson, Dennis Morgan, Dorothy Malone, Penny Edwards

The duo of Morgan and Carson has always been full of fun and laughs, perhaps because the two gentlemen were such good friends in real life. But I did notice that a good deal of the plot structure and character development were cribbed from another Warner Brothers musical, A Cowboy From Brooklyn. This isn't to say that the film isn't a delight, because it is. It's just that in the late 1940's Warner Brothers started the process of cannibalizing its own material. They'd turn ordinary comedies into musicals and very often the star of the show would be none other than Dennis Morgan himself. All I can say about Two Guys From Texas is sit back, relax and prepare to enjoy yourself for the next ninety minutes or so!