Girl Rush

Rawtha silly plot. Period piece. When two vaudeville performers head for the hills to find gold and strike it rich, they notice there are no women! They decide to bring their show to the west. Except they forget to tell the girls all about this plan. It's all just excuses to show off all their various acts. A whole bunch of songs by Pollack and Harris. Stars Wally Brown, Alan Carney as Jerry and Mike. A very early role for Bob Mitchum, as Jimmy. Co-stars Frances Langford, Barbara Jo Allen as the girls in the show. Guys in drag. This would have been perfect for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby! Gotta have a bar room brawl. It's entertaining. Plain and simple. Just go with it. Directed by Gordon Douglas, who had made all those films with sinatra. A couple funny gags in their act.

This is the fourth in the RKO series of films featuring the RKO generated comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney. (The previous films were "Step Lively", "Adventures of a Rookie" and "Rookies in Burma.) "Girl Rush" is a standard Western gold rush comedy with all of the cliches. Frances Langford sings a few songs and Vera Vague is on hand as a foil for Brown and Carney. Most interestingly, young Robert Mitchum is the hero of the piece. Brown and Carney were RKO's attempt to create a rival comedy team for Abbott and Costello. Alan Carney is a decent impressionist with a rubber face, but he is also sluggish. Wally Brown is supposed to be the "Abbott" of the team, but he is much too funny to be just the straight man. Brown is the stronger of the two, with high energy and good instincts for both verbal and physical comedy. Although only Lou Costello could handle himself with musical numbers (Abbott didn't try), both Brown and Carney are decent song and dance men. To make a clearer comparison of the teams, Brown and Carney perform a version of the "Shell Game", a routine that Abbott and Costello put their mark on. In the A & C version, Abbott is the con man and Costello is the patsy. In the B & C version, Brown assumes Abbott's role and Carney plays his shill. The major difference is that Abbott was able to pull off the con, while Brown is as inept as his partner. Where Abbott takes advantage of Costello, Brown and Carney work together and are equally inept. There is a little chemistry between Brown and Carney which makes their partnership work, but they are equally at home working solo. Abbott and Costello had to work together; Abbott kept Costello from being annoying and Costello kept Abbott employed. Brown and Carney are not bad at all. Devotees of low comedy will enjoy their well made films.

The comedy team of Alan Carney and Wally Brown are often referred to as RKO's answer to Abbott and Costello. The difference is that Carney is not as over-the-top as Costello, and Brown is not a pure straight man a la Abbott--he's bumbling himself (it's as if Costello was 1/3 Abbott, and Abbott had 1/3 Costello in him!). Still, their films are enjoyable comic entertainment, and they are best known for the two films they did with Bela Lugosi:ZOMBIES ON Broadway and GENIUS AT WORK. In this film, they are musical comedy performers who keep producing flops, so they go out West to find some success. That starts the plot in motion (which takes them back East again, then back out West).The great Vera Vague (as Suzy) is in much of the film, romantically interested in Carney, which provides comedic sparks throughout. GIRL RUSH also provides an early starring role for Robert Mitchum. Mitchum had made a ton of films in 1943 (check his 1943 IMDb credits!) as he was establishing himself in Hollywood, and he really is the "hero" in this film. In hindsight, it's also clear how different from other actors Mitchum was--he is as different from others as James Dean was in the 1950's. GIRL RUSH is a competently made piece of bottom-of-the-bill, b-movie entertainment that would not make anyone's "favorite" list for 1944, but surely was fun and entertaining to watch while it was playing. Shown on TV today, GIRL RUSH has much the same effect. Carney and Brown are an excellent comedy team and were probably fine all-around entertainers in their day. With Vera Vague and her madcap antics added to the mix, you have a entertaining 80 minutes for a rainy day.

Abbott & Costello were so popular in the 1940s that RKO tried creating their own version of the team when they paired Wally Brown with Alan Carney. They made quite a few films together in the three years they were paired but nowadays they're practically unheard of by most film fans.

When "Girl Rush" begins, Jerry and Mike (Brown and Carney) are a successful act during the old west. But they go from popular to nothing when gold is discovered and folks stop attending their show. So they travel the west looking for opportunities. In one town, they find that the men there are starving for entertainment....and girls. And, some of the locals are tired of the nasty clipjoint in town and want something better...so they pay the boys to bring a show with LOTS of girls to their town...not realizing that the boys have no idea HOW they'll possibly do this.

In addition to Carney and Brown, the film features a young Robert Mitchum...which isn't surprising since the story is set in the old west and Mitchum mostly made westerns at this point in his budding career.

Overall, the film is silly fun...and VERY much like an Abbott & Costello flick Very similar and worth seeing.

The following two very entertaining comedy movies GENIUS AT WORK(1946 - Wally Brown, Allan Carney, Anne Jeffreys, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill - directed by Leslie Goodwins) Two radio detectives find themselves targets of a murdering fiend when their on-the-air recreations of the murders prove to be too accurate. The bonus film, GIRL RUSH, Wally Brown, Allan Carney, and Robert Mitchum, (1944 - directed by Gordon Douglas) is included free on the same DVD. Jerry and Mike (the comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney), two vaudevillians stranded in San Francisco during the 1849 Sutter's Mill gold rush, strike it rich in a completely unexpected way. They decide to bring a musical revue top- lined by female entertainers to the womanless frontier town of Red Creek, an idea which is quickly endorsed by the local miners who view these shapely recruits as potential mail order brides. Success brings complications, of course, and Jerry and Mike's plans to buy a wagon train and return east to New York are constantly frustrated at every turn by crooked gamblers and assorted varmints though a friendly cowpoke (Robert Mitchum) often bails them out of trouble. In the end, it takes a huge street brawl to set everything right and bring the townspeople together in a united front. These two movies are available online on one single DVD.