In Old Arizona

The Cisco Kid (Warner Baxter) is like a Robin Hood of the old west dressed in a matador’s suit.  Yes, he will loot passing stagecoaches, but is so charismatic about it ladies don’t seem too distressed.  He never hurts anyone and never robs them blind.  And like a true gentlemen, he uses most of his loot to buy gifts for his beautiful girlfriend, Tonya Maria (Dorothy Burgess).  But with the railways being built, the town sees The Cisco Kid as a nuisance that needs to be disposed of, dead or alive.

Sergeant Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe) is an over confident blowhard in charge of finding The Cisco Kid and bringing him to justice.  Problem is, no one has really seen the kid, so when he’s right under their noses or shaking their hands, they don’t even realize he’s the man they’re looking for.  The Kid uses this to his advantage and really gives the audience some good laughs along with a close shave.

Tonya Maria is one of the early seductive women of cinema.  We’re distracted at first by her good looks, she’s much more revealing than other girls with that knee length skirt and blouse casually showing one bare shoulder.  We also see that in 1929 they already had the basics for a bowchickawowwow scene.  Cisco just turns on the phonograph, Tonya leans seductively against the door frame, smokes a cigarette and they let the ham and eggs burn in the skillet.  Later we see that Tonya is just out for a sugar daddy, and once she helps Dunn kill The Cisco Kid she’ll have her share of the reward and a new richer boyfriend to buy her things.

The early comedy mixed with the tale of an evil woman makes In Old Arizona very enjoyable.  From start to finish it’s entertaining and captivating and by the end you may be trying to help your favorite characters out.  I enjoyed yelling, “No, she’s planning an ambush!” at the grainy film.  When the story draws you in there’s no need for over the top visuals.

I was a little surprised by the ending.  That scream chilled my blood and not a minute later there’s that unnaturally happy music.  Oh well, I guess it was a happy ending.

42nd Street

Stage director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) is starting a new show, Pretty Lady, despite his history of nervous breakdowns.  Abner (Guy Kibbee) will fund the production if his young girlfriend Dorothy (Bebe Daniels) is the star.  But Dorothy is only using old Abner as a sugar-daddy to move her career and she messes around with Pat (George Brent) on the side.  To stretch the love triangle further, Pat has taken an interest in a young, inexperienced chorus girl, Peggy (Ruby Keeler).  In only five weeks, Marsh gathers together scores of chorus girls and pulls the whole show together only for an accident to occur the night before the curtain rises and Peggy will have to rise to the occasion so that the show may go on.

Your first instinct would be to call this film dated, but there are some hilarious moments that transcend through the decades.  While the girls are auditioning, they have to lift their skirts to show their legs and old Abner sits forward in his seat, eyes wide and fingers wiggling.  The guy beside him delivers the perfect punchline: “Yeah, they got pretty faces too.”  During rehearsals, a pair of girls try to gossip between singing parts, where their chatter is only stopped when they have to move to different parts of the stage.  But when they’re not quacking away with each other, they’re cracking wise to their male counterparts, making sure they watch where their hands go.  And the final act during the production is full of laughs, from the Just Married sign stuck on the groom’s back to the great sung line, “Matrimony is baloney. she’ll be wanting alimony in a year or so.”  Also, watch the background in the scene with Peggy’s landlady, it had me in stitches.

If you get half way though this film and grow impatient for the musical numbers, have faith, all your prayers will be answered toward the end.  And it’s worth the wait. I’ve said before that I dislike musical numbers just wedging their way into the plot, so I personally like saving them for the end and not breaking up the flow of the story, but that’s just me.

The whole film is worth the wait for the ending production; it’s a real treat.  It’s a great way to end with all the beautiful visual choreography, toe tapping numbers and full of bits to put a genuine smile on your face. I especially enjoyed the long shots with the 42nd Street number.

Now, before I end, I have to ask did anyone else find the couple looking through the tunnel of legs just a little creepy?  That whole image traveling us through an army of legs to the look on their faces was just odd and unsettling to me, but maybe that wasn’t so odd in the thirties.

To reiterate: “Yeah, they got pretty faces too.”