Texas Lady

>>Claudette Colbert looking far too old and matronly for the part of an ambitious small-town journalist and card sharp Colbert certainly doesn't look matronly in this film - she's just as slender and attractive as ever.

I've just attended the WIllimasburg Film Festival, which showed this film. It has great meaning for Gregory Walcott- it was his "breakthrough" role, and his wife was pregnant with his first child, which she gave birth to a week after the movie finished filming.

In Walcott's biography, Hollywood Adventures, he tells the story of how he first met Colbert, who was concerned that he was so much younger than she was. But if older leading men can be put in with actresses 20 years younger than them, than women should be able to get the same treatment.

It is a bit episodic, but fun nevertheless.

My how the mighty have fallen. Roles must have gotten mighty hard to come by for an actress of Miss Colbert's caliber. This movie is very typical of 1950's oaters. The one unusal aspect is that Prudence (Miss Colbert) is initially a strong, independent woman, kind of unusual for a western. But in the end Gene Barry Sullivan Fitzgerald becomes her "protector". This is a very cornball movie and Gregory Walcott who plays Jess Foley has got to be one of the most wooden actors ever to grace the silver screen. One can almost see the pain on Miss Colbert's face as she delivers some of the corniest lines in movie history. It is such a can of corn it is worth watching for the unintentional humor it delivers.

She was 51 when she made this turkey, though she still tried the best she could to make it work. NO CLOSEUPS of her AT ALL in the film, and everything is shot from her LEFT SIDE, or straight on. A few glimpses of her right profile when she danced and the such, but 95% from her left side. Incredibly hokey film, the color is faded, Barry Sullivan looks bored to tears, Ray Collins spends half the movie sitting down. Gets interesting when the mean sheriff gets involved, and his resolution caught me off guard. But all in all, lame and dull and not up to snuff. Watch CLEOPATRA instead for a solid Claudette Colbert fix. Or better yet, catch the milk bath scene from THE SIGN OF THE CROSS or any scene from IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT for a good dose. This movie just doesn't work.

Texas Lady marked Claudette Colbert's one and only western and I think this RKO film was probably something that they might have had Barbara Stanwyck in mind for. Colbert though she gave a decent performer really is not a western type. I suspect she wanted at least one on her film resume and took Texas Lady which was an inflated B film.

After learning the game of poker for years, Colbert takes Barry Sullivan on and beats him handily. Sullivan, a gentleman riverboat gambler had cleaned out her father who had embezzled money and then lost his ill gotten gains at the poker table and promptly killed himself. After restoring the family honor, Claudette goes to Texas where she's inherited a newspaper.

The paper is the paid for rag of the owners of the local Ponderosa, Ray Collins and Walter Sande. Claudette starts agitating for a railroad spur to come to town. But that will mean less dependency on the cattle barons and new people settling. The plot here has certain similarities to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Claudette also gets some attention from fast draw deputy Gregory Walcott who kills a couple of small ranchers in the service Collins and Sande.

In the meantime Sullivan comes to town as his reputation is shot to all heck on the riverboat scene. Being both southerners to the manor born they find a lot in common.

Texas Lady was a decent enough western, but it looks like it was edited considerably down and a lot of the story doesn't really make sense. And Colbert is just not well cast in westerns. But her fans might like it. It sure is a far cry from the comedies she did in the Thirties and Forties.

This was Claudette Colbert's second to last theatrical feature and if this was the quality of scripts she was being offered at that time it's no wonder she stayed away six years between this and Parrish. First of all she belongs in some urbane urban setting not the Old West and try though she might she is out of place there. Additionally she and Barry Sullivan, always a dull leading man no matter his costar, go together like oil and water sharing zero romantic chemistry. The script is ordinary and the direction not terribly exciting plus the film is soft and fuzzy with over-bright color. If you like Claudette or westerns it's okay but don't expect anything above the routine.