La furie de l'or noir

High, Wide, and Handsome is a forgotten gem of a movie from 1937. Jermone Kern and Oscar Hammerstein created this sprawling musical adventure for the screen following the popularity of the 1936 film version of their musical, Show Boat, which also starred the great Irene Dunne.

Here Dunne plays a singer in a traveling snake oil show run by her father (Raymond Walburn). They bottle "rock oil" and sell it as an elixir. Dunne sings and dances in the show while daddy hawks the tonic. William Frawley plays a fake Indian who is also part of the show. After their wagon burns down, they are taken in by a local farmer (Randolph Scott) and his grandmother (Elizabeth Patterson). Of course Scott and Dunne fall in love, but Scott is sidetracked by his ideas for drilling for oil in 1850s Pennsylvania.

Songs, romance, and action combine to make this an unusual film as the couple battles the local bible thumpers as well as the crooked railroad men, led by Alan Hale. Along the way Dunne rescues a saloon singer (Dorothy Lamour) and runs away with a traveling circus. They pack a lot of story into this 112-minute film.

Dunne is, as always, a total pleasure to watch. She gets to sing almost all the songs in this musical (Scott never sings) and duets with Lamour on "Allegheny Al." The best song is the wonderful "The Folks Who Live on the Hill," which Dunne sings in closeup with a gentle breeze rustling apple blossoms and her lace bonnet. Scott is good in a role usually played by Joel McCrea, but Scott and Dunne have good chemistry. They also worked together in Roberta and My Favorite Wife.

Supporting cast is fine, headed by Patterson as the feisty grandmother, Walburn as the father, Frawley as the Indian (he also gets a number), Ben Blue as a mute, Lamour as the dumb-cluck who sings "The Things I Want" in fabulous close-up, Hale as the corrupt railroad man, Helen Lowell as a gossip, Irving Pichel as the bible thumper, and Akim Tamiroff as the saloon owner. Also of note is Charles Bickford is the bully. Bickford had starred with Dunne is the previous No Other Woman.

Worth looking for.

Without all the unnecessary singing, I'd score this on a 7 or possibly an 8...as I really did enjoy the plot. But the singing was a distraction...and what's worse is that it wasn't very good. I love Irene Dunne as an actress but as a singer...well, she was a fine actress.

The story is an unusual one because it's about the nation's first oil wells which were created in Western Pennsylvania in 1859. It begins just before this and a medicine show arrives in town. After a freak fire breaks out and leaves the show stranded, some of the locals take in the medicine show folk. One of them is Sally (Irene Dunne) and soon she is in love with the son of the old lady who took her into her home. As for Peter (Randolph Scott), he looks like a perfect catch for Sally...but little does she know that he's about to strike oil and the oil business would dominate their marrage and sour it as well.

In many ways, this reminded me of the later MGM film "Boom Town", as it's also about the oil business as well as its negative impact on a new marriage. Both are worth seeing, but I'd prefer "Boom Town" simply because it lacks the pointless songs of "High, Wide and Handsome"....none of which are memorable and just seem unnecessary.

Overall, worth seeing IF you don't mind the songs. The finale is pretty neat and the acting quite good.

HIGH HIDE AND HANDSOME is an big expensive Paramount musical directed by Rouben Mamoulian that tries to combine a MGMesque romantic musical production with a Cecil B. DeMille-sized dramatic epic with fairly successful results thanks to a lovely original Oscar Hammerstein III - Jerome Kern score and an excellent cast headed by Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Dorothy Lamour, Elizabeth Patterson, Alan Hale, Charles Bickford, Ben Blue, Raymond Walburn, and William Frawley.

Irene Dunne stars as a singer/dancer who travels the country as part of pop Raymond Walburn's medicine show. When the medicine show wagon burns up during a stint in Pennslyvania, Dunne, Walburn, and faux Indian entertainer William Frawley are stranded and put up for the night by farmer Randolph Scott and his grandmother Elizabeth Patterson. The trio works their way into Scott and Patterson's heart and stay on as help to earn their keep until Walburn can rebuild an old wagon Scott has given him. Irene and Randolph fall in love and she encourages him with his dream as he drills for oil on the family homestead. When the wagon is built and it's now time to go, the sheepish Scott can't bring himself to propose to Irene but as the wagon leaves and encouraged by grandma, Scott rides off to meet them and fetch Irene back.

At their wedding, the oil well hits a gusher and Scott and the local farmers are ecstatic about their potential fortunes. Alas, evil railroad magnate Alan Hale is out to milk them of every penny of profit by excessive fees to ship the oil on his railroad, hoping to make them sellout to him. Scott gets a brainstorm to build a pipeline to move the oil which Hale repeatedly attempts to thwart with his gang. Meanwhile, the Scott-Dunne union is crumbling due to his excessive devotion to the oil wells and when Irene is seen by Randolph singing in a saloon along with her poor friend Dorothy Lamour, a former shanty boat singer whom Irene is trying to help land a job, they have a big fight and Irene leaves to join her father in his current position with a traveling circus. Meanwhile, Hale continues his dastardly plans to ruin Scott's pipe dreams.

Irene Dunne is excellent as Sally, the rather elegant medicine show entertainer and Randolph Scott more than holds his own in a superb performance as her dashing bucolic white knight. Irene has several beautiful numbers including the classic "The Folks Who Live on the Hill". Dorothy Lamour is also excellent as the saloon singer who at one point is run out of town by the prudish "good people" of the area and sings the very lovely "The Things I Want". Elizabeth Patterson is always an asset to a movie and has one of her larger film roles here as the tough but loving grandmother and terrific comic support is supplied by William Frawley (who has also has a good song number at the wedding) and Ben Blue.

HIGH WIDE AND HANDSOME appears to have been only a modest success at the box office and is one of the least seen Irene Dunne films, as of early 2011 I don't believe it's ever aired on a cable network nor has it ever been released on video or DVD. While not a classic and not without it's flaws (the oil saga with good guys fighting powerful villains has perhaps been done in too many old films and the surprise heroes of the final reel give a rather absurd touch to the climax) it deserves to be seen and it's excellent songs and performances and beautiful set design and cinematography make it a quite memorable movie musical.

No objections against Rouben Mamoulian's expert directing, not against Irene Dunne with her reliable singing and acting either, but Randolph Scott never qualifies as an A-actor, he always appears as rather inferior to those he plays against, and here also the intrigue is rather mellow. His girl Irene Dunne is only good for acting and singing with her circus in musicals, while Randolph's only interest is his ambition for oil and money. How could they possibly go well together without skirmishes? Naturally, Randolph gets enemies for his ambitions, and his great project gets constantly sabotaged by brute force used in foul play by his enemies, leading to one disaster after the other. The finale is grandiose in its final battle, but this is no film for those interestd in human psychology and depth of intrigue. It is a very superficial story of ambition and success, and not even the music is very good - Jerome Kern certainly could do better, and you miss the charm of "Love Me Tonight" and its gorgeous spirituality with a dominating sense of everything important missing.

The first fifteen minutes of High, Wide and Handsome are very silly. Irene Dunne, her father Raymond Walburn, and his sidekick William Frawley are part of a snake oil salesman act. Then their wagon (full of oil) burns up and they're left with nowhere to go. Randolph Scott and his mother Elizabeth Patterson put them for the night. You might as well fast-forward through all that because it's so stupid you'll want to turn it off. I actually did turn it off, only to resume it a couple of years later for Randolph Scott's time as Star of the Week.

The rest of the movie is really good, so I'm glad I gave it another chance! No one knows exactly why Randolph Scott left traditional Hollywood and did westerns with his own production company, but when you see him in the 1930s, you'll see him giving his heart to different performances. Although his westerns were very popular, my heart aches that he wasn't given the A-tier Hollywood movies. He could have easily stepped into Shane, High Noon, or any John Wayne flick. He had the talent, the looks, and the onscreen energy to take Hollywood by storm. But I've never seen him exercise his acting chops more than in this movie. In one passionate speech, he's actually moved to tears in order to inspire the workmen to finish the job. He's romantic, determined, and ambitious, convinced that there's oil in the hills. No matter what anyone says, he continues to drill - and one day, it all pays off. But Irene loves him for the country bumpkin he used to be; will everything change when they're rich?

This movie didn't need to be a musical, especially since Irene Dunne only sings a few songs that don't really matter to the storyline. Scottie McScottie Pants never sings, but he does get to gaze adoringly at her as she serenades him. They have such fantastic chemistry together in this movie (and a steamy bedroom kissing scene) it makes you wonder if the sparks flew off the screen, too. With the love shining from his eyes, his blonde curls, and his strong muscles as he drills for oil, you almost forget anyone else is in the movie. But there is Irene Dunne, who loves him above all else, and you'll also see Dorothy Lamour briefly, and a young, brown-haired Charles Bickford!