User Reviews

It takes one big mind to turn things around in a small minded town. Guy Kibbee takes on the role of a wise old man who basically took over running the town's big business by outsmarting the town elders when he was a (somwhat) young man and now must face progress of a different sort by avoiding losing what he's gained through his own craftiness. In the process, he becomes matchmaker, surrogate father and psychiatrist while showing the stuffy, prune faced elders a thing or two about life.

'Some day, you'll get your tongue in a knot and choke yourself to death," Kibbee tells stonefaced Fern Emmett, meddling in the hiring of a beautiful young school teacher Carol Hughes while stirring the rest of the town up over his efforts to prevent himself from losing control of the local railroad. Bradley Page adds another snarly villain to his resume as the big city slicker who underestimates the smarts of a supposedly naive hick. Paul White, followed by Willie Best, plays the slow moving but fast dancing black drifter whom Kibbee aids in settling down. Lee "Lasses" White as the train conductor (married to the prune-faced Emmett) is a hoot, not aging at all from the opening scenes through the meat of the story 20 years later.

With Ms. Emmett (resembling the more famous Margaret Hamilton and the lesser known Doro Merande) and other lesser known character actors lining out the cast of provincial stereotypes, this is a passable time filler with a few lessons learned along the way. Emma Dunn, best known as Lew Ayres' mother in the Dr. Kildare series, plays Kibbee's gracious wife. Kibbee would take this character through five more films, but I doubt that the formula stretched much past this one.