The Lady of the Dugout

The Lady of the Dugout (1919)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Pardoned criminals Al and Frank Jennings sit down with a couple men who want to know about their past. The men are fans of their stories in The Saturday Evening Post and want to know if there are any stories that haven't been published. Al then goes about telling of them robbing a bank and then running into a poor woman and her child who were abandoned by her husband. THE LADY OF THE DUGOUT is a pretty silly little story because the Jennings' try to make themselves look like good guys, which they certainly were not. One really has to get over that and just sit back and try to enjoy the picture. I will say that technically speaking this here is one of the best Westerns I've seen from this era. Director W.S. Van Dyke does a really good job at keeping the action going at a great pace and he also manages to make the film look very professional. I think the biggest problem with the movie is that the title cards seem to preach way too much and I also think they say way too much. Quite often they'll tell us something like "the kid is sleeping" and then we'll get a shot of him sleeping. It will read "they were mad" and then we see a scene of them mad. There really wasn't any need for the cards and other times scenes just dragged on including one flashback where we see the woman's early days. Still, the film contains some great action scenes that make it worth viewing and there's no question that there's something interesting hearing this made up story from two outlaws.