Oro y sangre

John Payne plays Tennessee, a very successful gambler in the old west. It seems he's made some enemies and one of them tries to have him shot in the back. Fortunately for Tennessee, 'Cowpoke' (Ronal Reagan) is in town and sees the murder about to occur...and he intervenes. The two soon become friends. However, Tennessee can't believe Cowpoke is going to marry Goldie, as she's a cold-hearted money grubber and prostitute. But his new friend will hear none of it, so Tennessee decides to expose her for what she is by offering to marry her instead and take her to San Francisco...where he promptly dumps her. Naturally Cowpoke is angry. What will this do to their friendship? And how does Duchess (Rhonda Fleming) fit into all this? And why is there a lynch mob trying to hang them later in the movie?

Overall, this is a modest little western. Not great by any standard but it's different enough to make it worth your time.

John Payne is a gambler living in a California gold mining town. Rhonda Fleming owns the local bordello. When a guy who's upset with Payne tries to kill him, Ronald Reagan steps in and saves him. An uneasy friendship forms, made more uneasy by the relationship between Payne and Reagan's fiancé Collen Gray.

I can't say I thought much of this film. There's a bizarre, cheap unreality to it that I found constantly distracting. Fleming's "bordello" located in a pretty small frontier town has utterly palatial interiors that feel like sets borrowed from a film about Louis XIV. The gambling loss that Payne and random guy argue about is said to be $12,000, which would be well over a quarter of a million dollars in today's currency. (It's not clear how anyone could casually lose that much during an evening's poker game.)

All this odd cheapness ended up amounting to a film I stopped paying much attention to. Reagan and Payne seemed to work it all out in the end.

Reagan's character is named "Cowpoke".

Tennessee's Partner is very loosely based on a Bret Harte story. The story takes place in a gold mining town in California where gambler John Payne finds it easier to make money at the poker table than digging for gold. Payne's who's name is Tennessee is probably no better than he ought to be, but the place is full of rough characters.

One of them is Anthony Caruso, another gambler who's got a bad case of jealousy. He eggs on another poker loser to bushwhack Payne, But a stranger riding into town played by Ronald Reagan saves Payne. He's simply known as Cowpoke. And he becomes Tennessee's partner.

Reagan is in town to marry Coleen Gray who's name Goldie implies what she's really after. Payne's known her in the past and knows what Gray is all about. He romances her again and leaves her on a boat to San Francisco.

Of course that's bitter medicine for Reagan and it puts a strain on the partnership.

Payne has another partner in town, Rhonda Fleming who's the local madam. They're partners in a combination bordello/gambling establishment. Payne takes the customer's money downstairs at the poker table and Fleming's girls do the same upstairs.

This marked the fourth film during the Fifties that Ronald Reagan and Rhonda Fleming appeared together in. They were good friends professionally and politically. Ms. Fleming's politics were quite compatible with the 40th president of the United States.

Tennessee's Partner is a nicely crafted B western and good entertainment even if we never do learn the real names of both Tennessee and Cowpoke.

There's a lot of eye candy in Tennessee's Partner, with John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, and Ronald Reagan. John is well cast as the tall, powerful, cowboy who rules the roost. No one dares to cross him, until someone does. Up against a barrel, his life is only spared by a visitor in town, Ronnie. There's an understandably instant friendship, but they do disagree on one thing: romance. John has kept Rhonda at bay for years, and Ronnie is anxious to marry his sweetheart as soon as he can. Ronnie suggests to John that he get also married, to which John balks: "You'd have to marry a woman!" It's very funny and has a totally different meaning today; but in 1955, all he meant was that he liked his bachelor lifestyle and didn't want to have to alter it for a woman's habits and tastes.

This is not a very spectacular western, but if you like the cast you can try it. Rhonda's character is pretty funny; instead of being a madam of a group of saloon girls, she's the "mother" to a group of virtuous girls who are looking for husbands. It's the height of the gold rush, and the women hope to stake their claims on men who have staked theirs. Will Rhonda wear John down and get a ring on her finger? Will someone finally topple John from his pedestal? Will anything destroy the friendship and loyalty Ronnie feels for his hero? All mediocre questions, and you can find all the answers in this mediocre movie.

The come on for this film was the boast that the West was like this film. I somehow do not believe that, but this is pure Hollywood at its best and its worst. Allan Dwan has a reputation among film buffs and clearly he directs well, but the plot is mainly set in a house for girls who want to get the best out of men. Rhonda Fleming looks her beautiful self and her acting is not bad either. Gamblers congregate there including John Payne who doesn't seem to like women very much in this role. His partner is someone who got him out of a dodgy situation, and that is Ronald Reagan who in my opinion cannot really act. Coleen Gray is bland as Reagan's love interest, and of course she is no good. This foursome play out the fantasy of the West and no doubt many lapped it up. A film for those who want to see glamour and a little violence and no one has a speck of dirt on them.