Senhora da Alta Roda

This was the first Mae West movie to appear after the introduction of the Production Code the year before and, given the generally held belief that this factor harmed her successive films, I was expecting to be let down by this one; indeed, while rarely scaling the heights of her best work, I found it to be a very engaging and entertaining vehicle with a fair amount of good lines.

Amusingly, this film – with the word “town” in its title – starts out way out West while West’s GO WEST YOUNG MAN (1936) starts out in a rural setting and goes rustic gradually! Interestingly enough, it features a vivid horse-racing sequence and another hilarious vignette in which West dabbles in opera singing: playing Delilah (“the only woman barber who made good”), she is prone to call out to her Samson, “Come ‘ere, Sammy!”; it’s worth mentioning here that The Marx Brothers also lampooned just these very diverse subjects for their first two big-budget MGM extravaganzas!

The plot is quite busy, especially for a 70 minute movie, with a handful of besotted males vying for the hand of wealthy oil tycoon West (who marries – and is subsequently widowed – twice during the course of the film, even if she is clearly chasing after her no-nonsense British employee Paul Cavanagh who is really an aristocrat!). Initially, I thought that Cavanagh was a curious choice for her leading man but, ultimately, he acquits himself rather well under the circumstances, and Gilbert Emery is a welcome familiar face as West’s Pygmalion (once she decides to take on the upper crust of society in her bid to win Cavanagh’s affections); incidentally, this portion of the film bears more than a passing resemblance to George Raft’s predicament in Mae West’s debut feature, NIGHT AFTER NIGHT (1932)!

"Goin' to Town" is a very good comedy and sort of Western that stars Mae West. It's also labeled as a musical, and Mae's Cleo Borden sings a couple of tunes and then some. The plot unfolds in three separate locales. The opening scenes have Cleo in a Western setting where she is a popular saloon singer. After she promises to marry a rancher who does some rustling on the side, he gets killed on her wedding day, but she inherits his land which has just been dotted with oil wells.

Cleo takes a fancy to the chief engineer of the oil project, Edward Carrington (played by Paul Cavanagh). But he doesn't seem to take a hankering to her. So, when he heads off for a social outing at the races in Argentina, Cleo enters her own high-spirited horse in the races in Bueno Aires. After the glamorous setting there, she heads for the high class New England area - still pursuing Carrington and trying to break into high society where she has been snubbed by a couple of flighty wealthy matrons.

The story has some extravagant and very funny developments there. The movie has some shenanigans with others trying to foil Cleo's quest for social standing. There's some more rough stuff and she tries some very unusual ways to establish herself. She's on the up and up but some of the high society patrons are not. They will "get theirs" in the end, and the film has a nice surprise ending for all - Cleo and the audience. This is a somewhat crazy and frenzied story with a sizable cast and light comedy. But it's Mae West at her best - whether singing in a saloon, a high class casino, or an opera in her own mansion.

In Going' To Town Mae West enacts her own version of the Horatio Alger story. She rises from dance hall queen, to millionaire, to high society, and finally to a title. Mae starts this rise by being a 'good woman to a bad man'.

The bad man is Fred Kohler who mixed cattle rustling with a lot of legitimate money and pays the ultimate price. He leaves everything to his fiancé Mae West. It's the beginning of her rise.

All the time she's got her eye fixed on Englishman Paul Cavanaugh who she knows as the engineer drilling for oil on Kohler's and now her property. She doesn't know at first he's an heir to a title, but she finds out soon enough.

Mae really comes into her own in this film. In previous films she had George Raft and Cary Grant twice as leading men. Going' To Town is a film she carries all by herself.

Cavanaugh is the film's weakness. Not a strong enough personality to be a lead, one can't figure out why Mae's so set on him. Someone like Leslie Howard would have really given that part some character. And what a team that would have been.

Still this film is all Mae West. And that's all you need.

This is the third of the Mae West movies on the 5-film, 2-disc collection I just watched and I just found out, the first made after the Production Code became a bit more strict. It's a bit of a mess, to tell the truth what with the change in locales from the Wild West to South America to Southampton. And some of the plot points confused me. But as long as Ms. West manages to keep her zingers at the ready and get some good songs in, to boot, this is still a pretty enjoyable outing for her. And it's always fun to see her give it to the snobbish society ladies, that's for sure! The men, for the most part, are pretty interchangeable but really, there's still plenty to enjoy in Going' to Town.

I must confess to a little bias here, I just love Mae West so you won't get an objective assessment of Goin' to Town from me.

Mae is pleasingly plump in this one, an unlikely sex goddess though it must be remembered that she was about forty before she made a movie. Still, the suitors crowd around her, especially in the Race Track sequence.

Goin' to Town seems to be a sort of modern-day Western with Mae getting around in a car as well as on a horse but she wears the same elaborate Victorian gowns as she did in Belle of the Nineties.

The plot is well summed up elsewhere; Mae is engaged to Buck Gonzales who is shot while rustling cattle. A lawyer advises her that she is entitled to his estate since she agreed to marry him. `You did consent, didn't you?' Mae: `Certainly did - twice!' Another line capable of a risqué interpretation is when Buck says `I've been thinking about you a lot lately' Mae replies `You must be tired'

Wonderful entertainment, she even warbles agreeably in the Samson and Delilah scenes and how about that walk? The word sashay was invented for her. No wonder there were strong rumours that Mae was a female impersonator. She describes her self as `a good woman for a bad man' and later `I'm a woman of very few words but lots of action' (she learnt Spanish while working in Tijuana!)

Goin' to Town is not her best film (for me - She Done Him Wrong) but I thoroughly enjoy it just the same.