Cowboy de Asfalto

This film is terrible. What makes this all the more unfortunate is that the film has a solid idea and a great cast. The idea was used to much better advantage in Abbott and Costello's 1942 comedy for Universal "Ride 'em Cowboy". Coincidentally Dick Foran also appears in that film although as a character similar to Dick Powell's, the phony cowboy. Pat O'Brien plays his standard fast talking promoter to perfection but adds very little to the proceedings. It's hard to believe that this was the same year that he did both "Boy Meets Girl" and "Angels With Dirty Faces", both co-starring James Cagney. The songs are less than memorable. It's great fun to see a very young Ronald Reagan in a supporting role.

Dick Powell and Priscilla Lane sing a cute duet called "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride": Standing under a tree, Powell strums a guitar while the two trade lines and hardly stop smiling through the whole song. It's a charming highlight of this enjoyable and unassuming comedy.

Powell plays a singer on his way west (from Brooklyn) who gets stranded at a Wyoming dude ranch run by Lane and her family. Hired as a ranch entertainer, Powell is quickly discovered by vacationing press agent Pat O'Brien, who immediately gives him a new name ("Wyoming Steve Gibson") and hauls him back to New York to present him as the next big thing—a "genuine" singing cowboy. What will happen if the public learns Powell is a fake?

Among the many whimsical elements here are Powell's fear of animals (he turns tail and runs when he sees so much as a bird fly past); Lane's insistence on proper Western pronunciation and terminology (you don't "think," you "reckon"); and Pat O'Brien's lightning fast delivery of virtually every line he speaks.

Ronald Reagan is also funny as O'Brien's bemused but enthusiastic assistant. Dick Foran pitches in as a frustrated western crooner himself who butchers "Home on the Range" every time he can corral an audience.

Powell and Lane are attractive leads, and both are especially good in the scenes they share. The plot really isn't much….but the songs are fine and the cast make it all very easy to watch.

Elly Jordan (Dick Powell) is a musician from Brooklyn on his way out west. But he and the other two in his trio get caught riding in a boxcar for free and are tossed off the train somewhere in Wyoming. They come upon a dude ranch - a working ranch that also functions as a hotel/resort for "tenderfoots" seeking the western ranch experience. At first the daughter in the family, Jane Hardy (Priscilla Lane) thinks Elly is just another tramp and refuses his offer of working for food. Then she has second thoughts and hires Elly and his trio as musical entertainment.

Because the ranch is catering to easterners looking for that western authenticity, Jane teaches Elly how to talk, walk, and act like a genuine westerner. It works so well that when an agent on the verge of a nervous breakdown (Pat O'Brien) and his assistant (Ronald Reagan) show up for a relaxing stay at the ranch, they are completely taken in by Elly's act and sign him to a radio contract as Wyoming Steve Gibson, a genuine singing cowboy who can also rope and ride.

Complicating factors include the fact that Elly has a phobia of all animals - from the big ones you should be afraid of like bulls, to the tiniest creatures like gophers and canaries. Also, an actual singing cowboy at the ranch resents how well Elly is doing both career-wise and with Jane and knows that Elly is a city slicker. Complications ensue.

This is passable entertainment, but it seems like Warner Brothers was struggling for a reason to make this movie in the first place. It's like they realized they wanted a Dick Powell film so there would have to be a musical theme of course, but had to strain to come up with anything past that. So they added a Western theme - Powell had never done one of those before - and then strained to fill 75 minutes with .... something. As a result it has dull stretches and pointless stretches. 15 minutes could have been cut and it would have lost nothing.

THE COWBOY FROM BROOKLYN (Warner Brothers, 1938), directed by Lloyd Bacon, is another variation to those familiar rise-to-fame stories starring Dick Powell. Neither the best nor the worst of this kind, it's basically an attempt on showcasing Powell's range as both singer and comic, to fair results in the latter.

Powell plays Elly Jordan, a guitar player in The Three Sharps band. Traveling on a freight car bound for Hollywood along with his fellow musicians, Spec (Candy Candico) and Louie (Harry Barris), the "musical hobos" are discovered and forced off the train by a couple of brakemen. Stranded in the middle of Cody, Wyoming, the trio walk themselves to the Hardy Dude Ranch where Elly meets cowgirl, Jane Hardy (Priscilla Lane), who offers them a job on her ranch for food and lodging. There's one problem, Elly's phobia towards animals. Whenever approaching anything ranging from horses to gophers, he runs away and hides. In time, Jane changes Elly from city dude to full-fledged singing cowboy. Sam Thorne (Dick Foran), Jane's suitor, is jealous over her attention towards Elly. During a campfire gathering where Professor Landis (James Stephenson), magician and hypnotist, is guest of honor, Elly's singing attracts Roy Chadwick (Pat O'Brien), a New York theatrical agent,traveling along with "Speed" Dunn (Ronald Reagan), his press agent. Roy immediately signs Elly to a $75 a week radio contract. Before the night is over, Elly leaves with the men bound for New York. Elly, christened "Wyoming Steve Gibson," is now a popular cowboy singer, winning the affections of Roy's sister, Maxine (Ann Sheridan). Complications ensue when Elly, still fearful of animals, finds he's to appear in a rodeo at Madison Square Garden where the cowboy from Brooklyn must prove himself by roping calf's and riding horses.

Powell, a youthful crooner having gotten his start in musical films in 1933, was by now maturing to full-facial stature. Quite believable as a singing cowboy, he's less acceptable as one unable to overcome his fear of animals. (Is this the same Dick Powell who later assumed the role of tough guy detective, Philip Marlow in 1944's MURDER, MY SWEET?). While initially amusing, his frightful manner in time becomes quite repetitious and tiresome. The same can be said for Hobart Cavanaugh role as his father, hiding in the corner, covering his face at the site of a parrot. Powell's similar phobia antics towards horses in GOING PLACES (1939) is actually better and far more amusing. Other comedy highlights include Professor Landis's attempt in hypnotizing Elly to overcome his fear of animals, resulting to Roy going under the trance instead, rushing to the streets of New York traffic, riding a horse, shooting his guns, and yelling out "I'm Wyoming Steve Gibson," with Mr. Jordan in hot pursuit.

Songs by Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer, consists of: "I Got a Heartful of Sunshine" (sung by Harry Barris, Candy Candido and Dick Powell); "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride" (sung by Priscilla Lane and Dick Powell); "Git Along Little Doggie" (sung by Johnnie Davis); "I'll Dream Tonight" (sung by Powell); "Howdy, Stranger" (by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, sung by Powell); and "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride" (reprise by Powell).

At 77 minutes, chances are that THE COWBOY FROM BROOKLYN, considering tight editing and limitations of certain characters. was initially planned as a 90 minute theatrical presentation. The first such mention is the sudden disappearance of band members, Spec and Louie, both gone shortly after taking refuge at the Hardy ranch. The second is Ann Sheridan, visible in only two brief scenes, save one photo of her on the night stand in Elly's room. The theatrical trailer that sometimes precedes the film whenever shown on Turner Classic Movies, indicates more deletions involving Sheridan where she's chasing after Powell so to vamp him in his hotel room, coming to a close with Roy (O'Brien) opening the door only to get hit over the head with a vase. Another noticeable edit is finding the title tune, "Cowboy From Brooklyn," as one the songs listed in the opening credits. In the 1938 Warner Brothers short, FOR AULD LANG SYNE (once featured on PBS's "Matinee at the Bijou" in the 1980s), with a host of Warner Brothers stars paying tribute to the late Will Rogers, there's a musical segment of Powell singing "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride," accompanied by cowboys at a campfire. No doubt another unused sequence.

Rounding out the cast are: Johnnie Davis (Jeff Hardy); Granville Bates and Emma Dunn (Mr. and Mrs Hardy); Elisabeth Risdon(Mrs. Jordan); Dennie Moore (Abby Pitts); Jeffrey Lynn(A Reporter); with William B. Davidson and Ken Niles, among others.

While THE COWBOY FROM BROOKLYN could be categorized as a western style recycling of Powell and O'Brien's earlier outing in TWENTY MILLION SWEETHEARTS (1934), Warner Brothers got more mileage out of this story when recycled as TWO GUYS FROM Texas (Warners, 1948), starring Dennis Morgan, with Jack Carson as a sidekick with a phobia towards animals, which is where any similarities to this movie ends. THE COWBOY FROM BROOKLYN may be something of a satire on the singing cowboy genre of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, yet in spite of the cast working hard on weak material, the songs are of good standing and laughs infrequent. (**1/2)

Dick Powell is a down on his luck musician/singer from Brooklyn who's looking for some kind of work at Priscilla Lane's dude ranch. She signs him on as a new singing cowboy although Powell has a deathly fear of anything on four legs. Visiting talent agents Pat O'Brien and Ronald Reagan hear Powell and immediately want to manage him. All of this ain't sitting too well with Dick Foran, Lane's sweetheart. Powell is moving in on him in the talent and love departments.

Cowboy from Brooklyn is so typical of the wonderful entertaining nonsense that movies used to be about. But Dick Powell by this time was desperately trying to broaden his image. It was being continually cast in these kind of films that made Powell leave Warner Brothers two years later after his contract was up.

Pat O'Brien made six features with Powell, more than anyone else except James Cagney. By this time he was playing fast talking press agents, managers, etc. in his sleep. He too would leave Warner Brothers in two years for greener pastures.

Ronald Reagan before he left for even greener pastures said that the two best friends he made at Warner Brothers were Pat O'Brien and Dick Powell. He described both as being inordinately patient and kind with a new player just getting started. He never forgot the encouragement both gave him in his career.

Dick Foran in Boy Meets Girl showed he had some hidden comedy talents in burlesquing his singing cowboy image. He does it again here, deliberately singing offkey and flat to contrast with Powell's tenor. Not too many performers would let themselves be deliberately upstaged like that. At the time he was the singing cowboy star at Warner Brothers and he too would be leaving them shortly.

The gimmick here is how Powell turns into what O'Brien built him up as. It's pretty funny I have to say and here's a hint. Think Road to Rio.