User Reviews

This was really a charming and sweet adventure about a naive cowboy (actor/songwriter Carleton Carpenter)that comes into Las Vegas for the rodeo and has a lucky streak gambling. He comes to attention of a girl Oscar-nominated Jan Sterling (The High and the Mighty) that has been around the block a couple of times and is convinced to participate in a slot machine rigging.

There are a lot of laughs as the cowboy manages to fall in love, lose at the rodeo, and lose the girls all in a short 73 minutes.

Keenan Wynn provided good support as the slot house owner in one of his 268 roles.

This odd film was shown at the dinner hour tonight. Odd because it works but it is quite disparate in it's plot lines.

Carleton Carpenter (who normally appeared in MGM musicals) is Harlan, a would - be rodeo cowboy, attending a rodeo in Las Vegas. He has been brought up in Kansas, and one of the girls he grew up with is Dixie (Jan Sterling). She is working in a gambling parlor run by Al (Keenan Wynn) but pretends that she is a potential dancer. When Harlan shows up for his rodeo he and Dixie reunite. Harlan leaves his gear at the gambling parlor (Al gives Harlan permission to do so). But what Harlan does not know is that Dixie has gotten involved with a fellow who is planning to rob the one armed bandits in the parlor. When this happens, Dixie is immediately suspected...and by extension Harlan. Instead of doing the sensible thing of confronting Al and the police and proving his innocence, Harlan decides to assist a panicking Dixie in fleeing Las Vegas and heading for the Utah border.

Sounds serious, doesn't it? But much of the film's charm works on the interaction of Harlan and Dixie on the road, and how they have conflicting viewpoints but find they have strong feelings for each other. At one point Dixie drives off in her jalopy leaving Harlan behind in a ghost town. She did not like his idea of returning to confront the police. But she returns to pick him up and get him to Utah. She finds him on the side of the road nursing his aching toes. Hardly romantic, but cute as she convinces him to trust her again.

It has nice desert scenery of some of the most isolated landscapes in America. And one of the worst to be stuck in. On the road to Utah the jalopy (with leaking radiator and threadbare spare tire put on the car) has to cross a rickety, condemned wooden bridge over a chasm. Later it has to be driven (with no break linings or working gears on the road) driving down a curving narrow mountain.

In the end he offers himself to her for a life of ranching. But is ranching what Dixie would be happy with, including feeding chickens and possibly slaughtering an occasional hog (and living in near isolation for most of the year)? We are aware that they really like each other, but can Dixie make the leap that Harlan wants her to make?

Wynn plays his role with more heart than one usually sees in his characters. So does someone else in the film, who really only has a small role here - Douglas Dumbrille as a rodeo official (with nothing up his sleeve like a secret agenda). On the whole the film is a sweet one, and if not an earth shaking piece of cinema worth a 90 minute viewing.

If the information is correct on Carleton Carpenter's brief bio page here on IMDb, he's still alive and approaching his ninetieth birthday in a couple of weeks as I write this. I don't recall seeing him in any prior films, but probably ran across him in one of his Fifties appearances in a handful of TV Westerns. I don't know if you'd call this movie a Western as much as a bittersweet romance with a rodeo backdrop and a neat look at 1952 Las Vegas.

Almost from the outset, the story looks like it'll end up with a walk down the aisle between Carpenter's character Harley 'Tumbleweed' Williams, and hash-slinger Dixie Delmar, nicely portrayed by Jan Sterling. That's even after we hear Carpenter sing the opening theme song, 'A Cowboy Had Ought to be Single'. Harley and Dixie actually looked like an attractive couple that were made for each other, but in the words of that famous and recently deceased New York Yankees catcher, Yogi Berra, when Dixie found a fork in the road, she took it.

Anyone who's recently been to Las Vegas ought to get a kick out of this early look at the gambling mecca. Among the many sights, one will get a quick glance at such places as the Pioneer Club, the Golden Nugget, The Flamingo, The Thunderbird, Silver Slipper, El Dorado, and here's one that really got to me - the House of Jackpots. Personally, I can't say with any certainty if any of these might still be around. If I ever get to Vegas myself I'll have to check it out.

The picture takes a bit of a surreal turn in the latter part of the story when Harley and Dixie take it on the lam for her involvement in a prior robbery and Harley's perceived theft of a one armed bandit. There's no way you would have gotten this viewer across that decrepit wooden bridge in the middle of the desert, and that careening downhill run by Dixie's jalopy was a bit over done. I remain mildly conflicted over the story's resolution since it didn't turn out to be a happy ever after affair, especially after Harley expressed his undying love for Dixie. I mean really, how does a gal give up on a guy after he tells her - "If you don't want to butcher the hog, I'll do it for you".