The Groom Wore Spurs

Ginger Togets was entering a dangerous age for a star.So presumably she was having to accept everything that was offered.She and Carson have no chemistry whatsoever in this mirthless film.Carson resorts to too much mugging to overcome the lack of laughter.

It's kind of hard to believe that Ginger Rogers could possibly have been interested in Jack Carson. This film could have been a whole lot better with Lucille Ball or even Joan Davis who plays Ginger's roommate and confidante in the title role.

The Groom With Spurs casts Ginger as a lawyer and daughter of a famous man of the bar who is just starting to make a name for herself. Until she gets Jack Carson as a client and then she winds up marrying him.

Carson is his usual bloviating blowhard self and he plays a movie cowboy who does little on the screen but mouth dialog. He's got a big gambling debt to Stanley Ridges over in Nevada where it's legal and therefore one can sue. So he hires Rogers as an attorney and winds up marrying her.

For Carson this is a perfect role. And Ginger tries to mold him to be more like the screen image she and rest of a America know. It's not going to be easy, but he gets an opportunity in real life to show what he's made of.

All I can say is those films he did do give him some indication of what a hero is supposed to be.

To be a classic this needed a classic comedienne. Ginger is all right in the part, but what Lucille Ball could have done.

Jack Carson is a singing cowboy star who can't sing, can't ride, and is afraid of guns. He can lose $60,000 to gambler Stanley Ridges. So his studio hires lawyer Ginger Rogers to negotiate with Ridges. But on spending the evening with him in Las Vegas, they get married. Ridges, who was a friend of her father, forgives the debt as a wedding present. That, it turns out, was Carson's plan all along. Miss Rogers decides, at the advice of roommate Joan Davis, to make a man of Carson.

It's one of those movies which are occasionally amusing without being actually funny. Miss Davis certainly tries, but the script goes from post-war, Code-compliant grouchiness to over-the-top frantic with no build-up. Everyone tries hard under director Richard Whorf (who makes an uncredited appearance as a motion picture director). Also appearing are John Litel, Victor Sen Yung, George Meader, Franklyn Farnum, and Ross Hunter.

I am writing this only because there are no IMDb user comments at January 2008.

*

I got this and A Shriek In The Night 1933 because they are Ginger Rogers, no other reason.

Shriek has several detailed comments from people who know that era and they tend to rate it as okay entertainment as well as a useful example of the final days of one particular low budget production company. Also, a glimpse of Ginger before her RKO roles with Fred.

The only problem, for me, with Shriek is the sound quality. It gets in the way.

*

Groom as a bit more mature, and also with okay sound and vision. Still only 4x3 black and white, but it is still a carrier for Ginger.

This IMDb page does have a need for some reasonably well informed user comments.

Whoever or whatever is responsible, the flick's a flop. Maybe it's the hefty staff of 4 writers, each apparently in his own room with no inter-com; or maybe it's unsteady director Whorf soon to flee into TV; or maybe the trail's traceable to both camps. But whatever the case, the promising parody of a kids' cowboy hero who can't ride a horse, shoot a gun, or throw a punch, goes down the drain amidst a mish-mash of contrasting styles and themes. And pity poor Ginger Rogers looking lost in a role that defies description anywhere on planet Earth. Too bad Astaire's not in the wings. Nonetheless, the movie's potential is there with comedic actor Carson in the lead, along with stand-out Joan Davis adding her feisty bits. Unfortunately, their occasional bursts of nutty humor are lost among the off-putting mix of blackmail, jealousy, and murder. Too bad, since the flick's a real lost opportunity for its cowboy time, and even for today's space age.

(In passing - watch for soon-to-be, big-time producer Ross Hunter in minor role of Austin Tisdale. Check out his list of box-office biggies from late 50's through 1960's. So I guess the movie wasn't a complete failure.)