Skipalong Rosenbloom

This is a silly film, deliberately so. I saw this as The Square Shooter, its alternate title. I suspect the original title was chosen because of the popularity of Hopalong Cassidy when it was made.

The film is set in the Old West, and many clichés of numerous Westerns are lampooned in the film. There are chases, fights, and the like, but taken to impossible extremes. In the serious Westerns of the period, many of the fights looked staged; this carries fighting to an extreme.

This film is very effective in the tradition of slapstick comedy. It has no depth, but doesn't need any. Although I'm phasing over to DVDs, I'd snap up a VHS copy if I ran across one.

I haven't seen this movie since I was a kid, and can't remember if I saw the whole thing. Somebody should make it available, or show it on PBS. It's a great bit of Americana and funny beyond words could describe.

I REALLY WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN!

My cousin and I saw this movie when it came out in the early 50s.

We were like about 12 years old, the perfect age for this movie.

I think I wet my pants I laughed so hard. And yes, the balsa rocks. There is a fight scene where they are throwing rocks the size of cars at each other. Also I recall a scene in a gold mine where the villain is going to blow up Slapsie. The scene got so silly the cast was laughing at it. This was way before Sid Ceasar of any of the other crazy satire that started in the early 60s. It was way ahead of its time (of course I'm going on a 40 year old memory here). I think it was even before Mad magazine. It was the most insane thing I had ever seen. We couldn't believe it. Boy, would I like to get a copy, or even just see it again.

Stars of Skipalong Rosenbloom, Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom and Max Baer were a pair of former boxing champions who around this time had a nightclub act together. Rosenbloom who talked with that punch drunk New York accent and Baer who was always known as a man who liked to have a good time more than anything else. They did well on the nightclub circuit and made this western spoof on Hopalong Cassidy currently enjoying a revival on the small screen.

Rosenbloom of course is in the title role. He's the sheriff, not the brightest law enforcement official going, but earnest enough is after the Butcher Baer gang. Baer is the most notorious outlaw in the west, but he's only the front. Behind every man there's a smart woman and in this case smart and beautiful Hillary Brooke.

Both Rosenbloom and Baer also did screen roles after their boxing careers were over. Both separately were known to the movie-going public. This is the only time both were together in the same film.

Skipalong Rosenbloom relies a lot on the images of these two fighters. I do hope someone brings this interesting film out on DVD.

Everything said about "SKIPALONG ROSENBLOOM" is so true. As a kid seeing it for the first time back in the '50's (remember we were cutting our teeth on barbed-wire cowboy movies, Wild West cerealized TV shows, adventure comic books & MADdening humor magazines, fer chrissake)... Well, this amalgam of the aforementioned all rolled up and neatly placed in this ridiculous film was like finding a pot o friggin' comedy/uncontrollable laughing gold at the end of the rainbow. It represented the "best of silliness" for the times of a pre- teen that was living in such a serious world of atomic war talk and communism mumbo jumbo.