Two Guys from Texas

This movie is an example of Classical Hollywood Style with the romantic plot and elaborate sets. The two main characters are made for these roles. It has catchy music and a great story line. A good weekend afternoon movie.

Steve (Dennis Morgan) and Danny (Jack Carson) are northern boys who end up in Texas. Their car breaks down and then gets stolen...and they are stranded. Fortunately, a combination ranch/night club (??) is nearby and they get jobs. Soon they start trying to woo the same lady...and this is interrupted by some crooks committing a robbery and everything thinks Steve and Danny did it...so they get locked up in jail. So they did what anyone in Hollywood would do...they break out and prove their innocence!

In so many ways, this follow-up film to "Two Guys from Milwaukee" plays like a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road Picture. You have the guys vying for the same lady, you have them get into mischief and you have a lot of singing....but none of it quite as good as Hope- Crosby. Worth seeing, but pretty much in the category of 'Time Passer' for me.

By the way, get a load of the awful rear projection used in the bucking bronco sequence...yecch!

Warner Brothers seem to have made a concerted attempt to groom Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan as their studio's version of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, with Morgan as the Bing-like handsome affable crooner and Carson as the Bob-like egotistical braggart. Although Carson and Morgan display real chemistry together, they simply aren't in Hope and Crosby's league. (Jack Carson's facial moles might be part of the problem.) Typically, Warners musicals lacked the production values of Paramount's splashy 'Road' films -- I can't recall a single truly great Warners musical, except for 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' (plus some later Warners adaptations of musicals that originated on Broadway) -- and the scripts and songs of the Carson/Morgan films are usually far inferior to Hope's and Crosby's material.

'Two Guys from Texas' is likely the best of the Carson/Morgan teamings, and it's a delightful musical comedy ... profiting from an elaborate animation sequence that seems inspired by the animation in MGM's 'Anchors Aweigh'. Dennis and Jack play a couple of vaudevillains who are motoring through Texas. Dennis sings a tune about tumbleweeds in front of some bad rear-projection. They run afoul of some hold-up men and land up at a dude ranch where they attract the attention of two young ladies: pretty Dorothy Malone (very sexy in a Dorothy Lamour wig), who fancies handsome Dennis, and the rather less pretty Penny Edwards, who fancies Jack. Apparently unaware of his facial moles, Jack wonders why he isn't as successful with the fair sex as Dennis, and this leads him to consult a local doctor (splendidly played by veteran character actor Fred Clark). The wind-up gag involving Clark's character is hilarious.

Jack Carson's character is lumbered with a ridiculous handicap -- he's afraid of animals: ALL animals -- and some unfortunate dialogue, even telling the doctor that sometimes he wishes he was a girl. Hmm...

The script is largely by I.A.L. Diamond (best known for his Billy Wilder collaborations) and Allen Boretz of 'Room Service' fame. I laughed at one very clever dialogue scene on a cutaway set. Carson and Morgan have checked into the dude ranch and are sharing one room, while the two women are in the room next door over with a partition between. The men are conversing in one room while the women are talking in the other, but the two conversations interleave so that the dialogue takes on an entirely new meaning. Ingenious and hilarious! Less impressive is the torch song "Hankerin'".

The best song here (by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne) is a comic duet for the two men, 'I Wanna Be a Cowboy in the Movies', but the song that gets the most attention is Morgan's romantic ballad 'Ev'ry Day I Love You Just a Little Bit More'. This is reprised in the animation sequence, done in standard Warners toon style by Fritz Freleng of the Termite Terrace gang. We see a cartoon version of Dennis Morgan crooning to some swooning she-sheep in bobby socks and saddle shoes, while a cartoon version of Jack Carson gets some advice on sexual politics from Bugs Bunny before he's chased by a large ugly Red Indian woman. This is a reprise of an unfunny running gag from the live-action scenes, in which Carson is pursued by Lilly Christine as the unattractive Red Indian who speaks Spanish. ('Oye, muy bonita!') For some reason, the cartoon versions of Morgan and Carson in this sequence don't look nearly as good as the cartoon versions of other showbiz figures in 'What's Up, Doc?' and other Warners toons.

'Two Guys from Texas' is deftly directed by David Butler, formerly a handsome silent-screen actor who found his true metier behind the camera, but whose directorial career is woefully underrated. I'll rate this very enjoyable froth 8 out of 10. I wish that the other Carson/Morgan teamings were nearly as good as this one.

Warner Brothers answer to Crosby and Hope, Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson, star in Two Guys From Texas as a comedy team traveling through the Lone Star State when their car runs out of gas. A kind pair gives them a lift to Dorothy Malone's dude ranch and the boys are grateful. Of course that abandoned car out of gas later figures in some nefarious schemes.

Carson who enlivened many a Warner Brothers film in the 40s with his comic blowhard character is a man most afraid of anything that walks on four legs. Kind of ridiculous if you ask me, but Carson pulls off the Hope like gag.

And just like Crosby would want to cure his pal, Morgan seeks the help of visiting guest Dr. Fred Clark. All this leads to complications with Malone and another entertainer at the ranch Penny Edwards and the local sheriff Forrest Tucker. Not a good idea to make even a romantic rival of the sheriff.

Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn wrote the unmemorable but serviceable score which yielded no song hits for Morgan. For a man afraid of animals some of Carson's transformation is both miraculous and hysterical.

Like Bing and Bob, Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson both had considerable separate careers of their own. But their teaming yielded more than a few good laughs.

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and their "Road" pictures were some of the hottest properties around during the 1940s and it seems that the Warner studio was trying to recreate the magic with Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan in their shared pictures. Unfortunately it did not work. One of the things that made the "Road" pictures so much fun was the obvious friendship and chemistry between Bing and Bob. A large part of the dialog in their films was ad-libbed, something that Jack and Dennis either could not do or were not allowed to do. No, the songs are not all that memorable and, no, Dennis Morgan doesn't have as good a voice as Bing, but while the songs are forgettable they are still pleasant. Jack Carson was a good actor and a fair comedian, but he was never as funny as Bob Hope. The story here is pretty predictable and Jack's total phobia about animals (and the easy way he gets over it) is slightly silly but even with its shortcomings this film is fun and worth at least one watching. I just recently saw it again on TCM and enjoyed it a lot.