Ginger Rogers plays Rose Gillray, a businesswoman ready to strike a blow for women’s rights by convincing women to squeeze into her corsets.
When the corset business goes bust, she needs to find a way to pay off her debts.
Then she finds out someone is needed to sell barbed wire in Texas — the same Texas where barbed wire salesmen keep winding up dead.
So Rose musters her moxey and heads West with former corset model Molly Wade (Carol Channing in tow.)
They wind up in a town controlled by rancher Joel Kingdom (James Arness), who’s dead set against barbed wire, but quite taken with Gilray’s charms.
She’s also courted by James Carter, head of the steel corporation churning out the barbed wire, and Charles Masters, inventor of a horseless carriage he’s determined to drive from East coast to West.
Review:
A so-so comedy Western that leads up to an unlikely trial and an even more unlikely outcome.
But it’s certainly a curiosity based on its cast alone, including screen legend Rogers in a rare Western appearance and Arness and Clint Eastwood before they became TV stars.
In one of his first credited roles, Eastwood is given little to do but look pretty and smile at Channing’s Molly Wade. Arness is more effective as the cattle king smitten by Rogers, if not the barbed wire she’s peddling.
Throughout the film, Rose Gillray talks about striking a blow for women’s equality and the film did so in this sense: Both Rogers and Channing wind up being courted by gents 10 years their junior.
Directed by:
Arthur Lubin
Cast:
Ginger Rogers … Rose Gillray
Barry Nelson … Charles Masters
Carol Channing … Molly Wade
David Brian … James Carter
James Arness … Joel Kingdom
Clint Eastwood … Lt. Jack Rice
Robert F. Simon … Texas Ranger Cal
Frank Wilcox … U.S. Marshal Duncan
Dan White … Sheriff
Harry Cheshire … Judge Benson
Runtime: 92 min.
Memorable lines:
Molly Wade, selling corsets by song: “A corset can do a lot for a lady / especially when the lady’s got a lot.”
Channing to Eastwood: “What’s a Rough Rider?”
He hands her an enlistment paper.
Channing: “Oh, no. I can’t even ride smooth.”
Joel Kingdom, inviting Rose to his ranch: “You know, I’ve got a lot of rancher friends down there who wouldn’t mind you fencing in their wives a little bit, here and there.”
Rose Gilray: “Fence?”
Joel: “You know. Tuck ’em in a bit.”
Rose Gilray: “Molly, wake up. There’s a strange man in the room!”
Molly: “Oh, keep dreaming.”
Rose Gilray, arriving in Spur Ridge, Texas: “Then this invitation was just to get us down here to humiliate us.”
Rancher “I didn’t nothin’ about humiliatin’ ya. I heard a little talk about hangin’ ya.”
Molly Wade: “We were captured by desperate men. We were run out of town. And if we set one foot back there, we’ll be shot.”
Charles Masters: “Well, Miss Wade, you’re apparently unaware that women’s rights entitle you not only to live like a man, but die like one too.”
Molly Wade: “You mean you’re not going to have us killed?”
Joel Kingdom: “I figured to kill the salesman, Miss Molly, and spare the woman.”
Rose Gilray: “You might find it a little difficult to separate one from the other.”
Kingdom: “Nothin’ to it, honey. You just encourage one. And discourage the other.”
Rose Gilray, after being dropped off by a hanging tree: “They’re just trying to scare us.”
Molly Wade: “They’re succeeding!”
){kind=link}