"Goin' to Town" is a very good comedy and sort of Western that stars Mae West. It's also labeled as a musical, and Mae's Cleo Borden sings a couple of tunes and then some. The plot unfolds in three separate locales. The opening scenes have Cleo in a Western setting where she is a popular saloon singer. After she promises to marry a rancher who does some rustling on the side, he gets killed on her wedding day, but she inherits his land which has just been dotted with oil wells.
Cleo takes a fancy to the chief engineer of the oil project, Edward Carrington (played by Paul Cavanagh). But he doesn't seem to take a hankering to her. So, when he heads off for a social outing at the races in Argentina, Cleo enters her own high-spirited horse in the races in Bueno Aires. After the glamorous setting there, she heads for the high class New England area - still pursuing Carrington and trying to break into high society where she has been snubbed by a couple of flighty wealthy matrons.
The story has some extravagant and very funny developments there. The movie has some shenanigans with others trying to foil Cleo's quest for social standing. There's some more rough stuff and she tries some very unusual ways to establish herself. She's on the up and up but some of the high society patrons are not. They will "get theirs" in the end, and the film has a nice surprise ending for all - Cleo and the audience. This is a somewhat crazy and frenzied story with a sizable cast and light comedy. But it's Mae West at her best - whether singing in a saloon, a high class casino, or an opera in her own mansion.
Cleo takes a fancy to the chief engineer of the oil project, Edward Carrington (played by Paul Cavanagh). But he doesn't seem to take a hankering to her. So, when he heads off for a social outing at the races in Argentina, Cleo enters her own high-spirited horse in the races in Bueno Aires. After the glamorous setting there, she heads for the high class New England area - still pursuing Carrington and trying to break into high society where she has been snubbed by a couple of flighty wealthy matrons.
The story has some extravagant and very funny developments there. The movie has some shenanigans with others trying to foil Cleo's quest for social standing. There's some more rough stuff and she tries some very unusual ways to establish herself. She's on the up and up but some of the high society patrons are not. They will "get theirs" in the end, and the film has a nice surprise ending for all - Cleo and the audience. This is a somewhat crazy and frenzied story with a sizable cast and light comedy. But it's Mae West at her best - whether singing in a saloon, a high class casino, or an opera in her own mansion.