Dick Powell is trying to get the financing for equipment to the played-out silver mine, which now appears to have a major copper deposit. He attracts the good will of counterfeiter Victor Moore amidst a rodeo, and the ill will of entertainer Dorothy Lamour.
It's based on a stage play, and should have made a funny movie with George Marshall directing, but it's one of those movies in which they interrupt the plot and complications every four minutes for a production number like Milt Britton and his slapstick orchestra -- which I think annoyed me at the age of 5 in the Catskills -- or for Gil Lamb to look unsuccessfully for counterfeit money. Miss Lamour sings a couple of songs, Cass Daley wears buck teeth and makes up a couple of the production numbers, and here's a musical in which Dick Powell doesn't sing. I expect he was so thoroughly annoyed with Paramount by this time that he refused. Not that any of the songs here are particularly good. Gil Lamb shows himself able to take a workmanlike pratfall, but there's no joy here, and even Moore's patented befuddled con man is dull, with no snap in the other performances. It's a waste of everyone's time, including the audience's.
It's based on a stage play, and should have made a funny movie with George Marshall directing, but it's one of those movies in which they interrupt the plot and complications every four minutes for a production number like Milt Britton and his slapstick orchestra -- which I think annoyed me at the age of 5 in the Catskills -- or for Gil Lamb to look unsuccessfully for counterfeit money. Miss Lamour sings a couple of songs, Cass Daley wears buck teeth and makes up a couple of the production numbers, and here's a musical in which Dick Powell doesn't sing. I expect he was so thoroughly annoyed with Paramount by this time that he refused. Not that any of the songs here are particularly good. Gil Lamb shows himself able to take a workmanlike pratfall, but there's no joy here, and even Moore's patented befuddled con man is dull, with no snap in the other performances. It's a waste of everyone's time, including the audience's.