Go West Young Man

This seems a slightly different Mae West picture in that Ms. West pretends to be someone else while hiding her true personality until the right man for her comes along. Also, the females in the cast have more of a scene-stealing status than before especially when the scenes are on Elizabeth Patterson and Isabel Jewell. Because this was made after the Production Code was put into full effect, there aren't too many of those risqué lines one would associate with Ms. West but when she's around Randolph Scott, well, just hear her talk then! The plot, such as it is, has her as a movie star forced to spend some time at a farm after her car breaks down, but really, it's just an excuse for some shenanigans among the cast. No great shakes, but Go West Young Man provides some good amusement for your viewing pleasure.

If you want to know who inspired Lady Gaga and Madonna, just look at Mae West. She stars and wrote the screenplay for this film vehicle of hers. She knew how to market herself in her career. In this film, she played Mavis Arden, a celebrity on her way to Los Angeles where she gets stranded in a small town in middle America. I believe it was Gettysburg. Anyway, she acts rude and offensive when her car breaks down in the small town but she comes back with an apology. Mae West characters are never really vicious or obnoxious. In this film, she is surrounded by great supporting cast of characters. While this film is about her, she doesn't forget the other characters and the storyline about her falling in love with a country aspiring inventor and mechanic. The film may have some issues with storyline and script but it's satisfactory with a surprising ending.

GO WEST YOUNG MAN is a good but yes, toned down comedy from Mae's pre-code days, but still fun to watch and not a waste of time at all.

Mae plays a movie star who stars in romantic drama and Warren William is her press agent who dreams up schemes to keep her from getting married, because her contract says that she cannot get married until 5 years. While they are on their way to Harrisburg Mae's custom-made car stuffed full of cold cream and shampoo breaks down. So, she is stuck in a rural colonial cottage boarding house with yummy Randolph Scott, twittering Alice Brady, and her biggest (and ditziest) fan Isabel Jewell.

While Mae West's acting and dialog was made tamer for the talkies, so was wonderful, handsome, cynical Warren William's, who was one of Warner Bros. top stars in the pre-code era. Warren William used to play ruthless bosses and all out cads, and while his role here is good and he gets to do some sleazy arguing and engineer some tricks on Mae West, GWYM was indeed a big step down for him. It was all because of that awful Satan MET A LADY (1934) which greatly hurt his career. Not to mention the awakening of the film censors by the Legion of Decency.

Elizabeth Patterson gives a great performance as the spunky Aunt Kate, and Isabel Jewell does a wonderful job as energetic, imaginative, movie-crazy Gladys. She does a funny imitation of Marlene Dietrich.

Oh yeah, and Randolph Scott was a total hunk with his "large and sinewy" muscles.

Go West, Young Man is a delightful screwball comedy featuring an unlikely but happily cast trio of Mae West, Warren William, and Randolph Scott. Mae is a glamorous movie star, the idol of millions, stranded in a hick boarding house when her limo breaks down in the sticks. She passes time by putting her fleshy moves on the handsome mechanic, played by Scott, who in 1936 was still very young looking and not yet principally identified as a western star. But the hayseed mechanic is more interested in tinkering with electronic inventions than in either the sultry Mae or his forlorn fiancé (Margaret Perry), while Mae's manipulative and protective press agent William and the fiancé's old maid aunt (Elizabeth Patterson) do all in their considerable conniving powers to put the romance on the skids. They get a lot of help from a herd of wacky local yokels, all ga-ga over glamor queen and all harboring their own ridiculous dreams of getting into the movies.

While Screwball comedy is a genre of elusive definition, Go West, Young Man embodies most of the common elements -- romance all out of whack, a collection of goofy but likable characters, frenetic, sometimes slap-stick action, class satire, and witty, fast-delivery dialog -- all breaking off in unexpected directions, like the baseball pitch the genre is named after. This movie also features a couple of other devices often seen in other screw-ballers -- the hoity-toity dame stranded in the boonies, and the cops being called, usually by mistake, and coming in like gangbusters. Henry Hathaway, a director better known for his outdoor action pictures, brings it all together with style and good humor.

The Mae West phenomenon seems to be rather poorly understood by the modern generation. They just can't fathom how so much fuss could have been made over a plump, middle-aged dame with no class except for low class, and not even very pretty, except in an incredibly cheap way (which, unfortunately, appeals enormously to most of us guys). How could all those men throw themselves at her feet? Well, that's pretty funny. So is sex in general. And that was her whole point! She was a grotesque parody of the sex goddess. Mae wrote most of her own material including the screen play for Go West, Young Man. She satirized everyone, playboys, politicians, country bumpkins, and most of all herself! She does it better than ever in Go West, Young Man, but in this movie it is even funnier than most of her others, because the satire is more gentle. The rubes are made to seem ridiculously funny, yet also very human and likable. And Mae, herself, gets the sharpest barbs. If for no other reason, this movie is worth watching for the hilarious scene of the sullen, portly sex goddess sauntering toward the boarding house steps escorted by a throng of adoring hayseeds and their pigs! That, as with many of the other gags, gives me a chuckle again every time I think of it. Which is the true test of whether a comedy is funny!

Code or no code, Go West, Young Man is still a Mae West movie, but it manages to be good, (almost) clean fun. Top notch Old Hollywood entertainment.

A subdued Mae West plays against type to good effect as a spoiled actress dallying with hunky amateur engineer Randolph Scott when she's briefly stranded in his backwoods town. Warren Williams also scores as the long-suffering studio man tasked with ensuring she sticks to the term in her contract that states she mustn't wed for five years.