The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend

I have loved this movie ever since I was a child. The slapstick comedy never gets old.

Shortly before "Anne Get Your Gun" was released, this film, which I dub "Betty, Get Your Gun" was released, as an often raucous western comedy, starring Betty Grable and Cesar Romero. But, sometimes the duo of Sterling Holloway and Dan Jackson, as the demented Basserman boys, take center stage. They have a penchant for spying on Betty, and acting up in her class or elsewhere. Porter Hall is perfect as the harried Judge O'Toole: the unlucky recipient of 3 bullets from Betty's gun, in a running gag sequence, that lodge in the least damaging place: his buttocks. Hugh Herbert is perfect as the eccentric doctor who pulls these slugs out. Rudy Vallee plays a dapper wealthy bachelor, who owns a gold mine, and competes with Cesar for Betty's heart. Cesar is a handsome rogue who has a love-hate relationship with Betty. .......During the credits, and at the end, the peppy title song is sung. Rather early on, onstage, Betty sings the melodious "Every Time I meet You", accompanied by a barbershop quartet. This was composed by Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon. Later, in a private setting, Rude Vallee, along with Betty, sing the standard "In the Gloming"......The silliness occasionally gets out of hand, but on the whole I liked it. See this short second feature film at YouTube.

Zany, scattered and at times downright demented, it is perhaps not so terribly surprising this was considered such a disaster when it came out that it instantly vaporized Preston Sturges' Hollywood career. I guess this sort of loose, free wheeling parody (and at times it has a Coen Brothers inspired kookiness about it) just wasn't the sort of thing audiences took to in 1949.

That very looseness, that daffy unrehearsed quality can give one the impression that the film is simply not as good as it could've been, but my God it isn't THAT bad. There are sparks of originality throughout and while it may never quite catch fire, this is still Sturges and still superior to a good number of tame, vanilla comedies that came out around this time.

It may not have been the case but it certainly looks like many of the actors were having a ball during filming, particularly Cesar Romero. Watch the one scene where he is quizzing some hayseed local about his sweetheart's (Betty Grable) whereabouts. He can barely keep a straight face and happily lets this character actor steal the scene with a funny, one man "who's on first?" routine. I thought Grable did a fine job as well and showed pretty fair comic timing, though I wonder if Sturges really wanted that other Betty (Hutton) for the role and couldn't get her for some reason. Sturges may have allowed those two freaky brothers (one of whom is played by Sterling Holloway) to take things too far; I'm sure audiences at the time watched their crazed antics with stone faces. In fact, they're not even recognizably human which may have been the point. I'm not sure.

An odd, not terribly satisfying movie, but watchable, never boring and with spurts of that famous snappy Sturges dialogue.

If you look at Preston Sturges' "Miracle at Morgan's Creek," 1943, staring Betty Hutton as Judy Kockenlocker, you will see how incredibly perverse it was considering the moral standards in the movie industry at the time. You have a movie suggesting that a woman getting drunk and sleeping with a soldier and becoming pregnant without even remembering his name was a hilarious situation. Sturges took delight in repeating her name over and over again, obviously finding it hilarious that it sounded like the painful situation of a "cock-in-locker." This movie is just as hilarious with its outrageous humor, having multiple and deliberate jokes about a judge who gets shot in his buttocks.

Unfortunately, this film came out in 1949, the year that produced the most film noirs and a year where Congressional investigations into Hollywood political transgressions were taking a horribly serious turn.

One can see this film and Preston Sturges as being the victim of the new politics of the time.

Betty Grable looks sexy in every scene and often adjusts her clothes (taking them on or off) to look even more sexy. Her blatant sexuality comes through in the metaphor of her being able to handle a gun better than any of the men in the picture. Never has the penis/gun equation been more straight forward.

If this movie had come out in 1944 or 1954, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece, but in 1949, the U. S. was preparing for a new world war which was expected to be a lot worse than the last one. The last thing the government (issuing daily warnings about impending world war wanted was an outrageous sex comedy filled with double and triple entendres like this film.

Don't miss it, especially if you are a Preston Sturges or Betty Grable fans. Fans of 1930s and 40s comedies will be happy to see at least half a dozen minor comedy stars, like Hugh Herbert, El Brendel, Sterling Holloway, and Porter Hall, plying their trade with obvious skill and joy,

Well, as far as I can see, there are only three things wrong with this movie, compared with the rest of the director's output:

1) It doesn't have Bill Demarest in it.

2) It doesn't have Jimmy Conlin in it.

3) It isn't funny.