An Angel from Texas

This Warner Brothers movie uses its juvenile B leads from BROTHER RAT in another version of George Kaufman's BUTTER AND EGG MAN. The dialogue is sharp and brittle, but only Ronald Reagan as a fast-talking, down-at-the-heels Broadway producer and Jane Wyman are spot on. Wayne Morris is miscast as Reagan's partner and Eddie Albert is dull in yet another go around as a put-upon nice guy.

Jane Wyman was a wonderful comic actress at this stage in her career and this was precisely her meat: hair bleached blonde and talking a mile a minute. Unfortunately, in a few years she would win an Oscar for playing a mute in JOHNNY BELINDA and would never get a chance to be this entertaining again.

Wayne Morris, Ronald Reagan, and Eddie Albert the trio of cadets that made Brother Rat a success are reunited for An Angel From Texas. The angel here is a financial backer in the theatrical sense.

Morris and Reagan are a pair of sharpie producers from the Max Bialystock school and Rosemary Lane is their secretary. She's an aspiring actress who left her small Texas town for a theatrical career. Eddie Albert is her hayseed boyfriend who comes to New York to find her.

Albert's bringing $20,000.00 to open in a business, but Morris and Reagan euchre it out of him on the condition that Lane star in the production. Fine but Ruth Terry is already committed and she has a gangster boyfriend in Milburn Stone who is getting out of the joint shortly and he's already invested some of his own coin on Terry's behalf.

All I can say is that Albert proves to be not quite the rube that Morris and Reagan take him for.

As for the plot you can find elements of The Producers and even more important Make Me A Star quite prominent in the story.

The ensemble players are perfectly cast Additional kudos also go to Jane Wyman who is both Ronald Reagan's wife in life and estranged wife in the movie. She is one smart dame who has a solution for all problems.

This was probably something meant originally for James Cagney and Pat O'Brien as the producers, but it works out fine here.

Small town girl Rosemary Lane heads off to NYC to become a famous actress. Boyfriend Eddie Albert follows her, bringing his family's life savings and a vague plan to buy a hotel. It's not long before this sweet and naïve couple encounter....

Wayne Morris and Ronald Reagan - a couple of stage producers who have a play but no money to produce it. Their friends and acquaintances are not forthcoming with cash. "Isn't it a wonderful thing," Morris notes, "how poor people can get when you're trying to raise some dough?"

Jane Wyman is hilarious as Reagan's wife. We meet her in his office, all dolled up, feet on his desk. She has won a big sweepstakes and is loaded--but she's not going to let Reagan blow her money on another lousy play. She hands him some bills: "Cuddles, there's your daily allowance." Reagan smiles delightedly. "TWO bucks?"

When our producers encounter Albert and his money, they quickly convince him to invest in their show and readily agree to hire Lane for the lead role. Complications set in when Ruth Terry shows up--she was the big star of their last flop and wants to star in this one too. She can't easily be brushed off because her boyfriend has taken an interest: "He's getting out of Alcatraz in three weeks. And boys? The kind of pineapples he throws don't come from Honolulu."

The great cast also includes Milburn Stone as the tough boyfriend and Tom Kennedy as his dim but enthusiastic henchman.

It's very funny, with lots of fast talking and a couple of neat plot turns. Rosemary Lane and Eddie Albert are just fine as the attractive lead couple--even though they are at times nearly drowned out by all the wackiness around them.

Strictly a by-the-numbers routine Warner Bros. programmer with RONALD REAGAN and WAYNE MORRIS as brash Broadway would-be producers in need of money to put on a Broadway show. Familiar territory for many a flimsy film plot. EDDIE ALBERT is the country bumpkin they try to con into putting his $20,000 into backing the show--thus the film's title AN ANGEL FROM Texas.

The fast-talking routines by Reagan, Morris and a very blonde and bleached JANE WYMAN at her snappiest are hardly the stuff of "bright farce" as an original review from The N.Y. Times states. The dull ROSEMARY LANE is supposed to be a gal with ambitions to become a great actress.

They're all capable performers and give their all to a tiresome show biz story that never is anything more than a routine programmer not worth a second look--or even a first one.

Based on a play by George S. Kaufman, it's strictly small time stuff, directed in the usual Warner Bros. frenzied style by Ray Enright.

Watching this otherwise forgettable movie was a revelation, because for years I had been led to believe that Ronald Reagan always played "the good guy" until his role as a crime boss in his last film, "The Killers." Well (to use a favorite Reagan sentence-opener), that's just plain wrong. In "An Angel from Texas," the future president plays a none too likable character. He isn't a villain exactly, because it's not that kind of movie. It's supposed to be a comedy. But Reagan's character is a big-talking, overbearing jerk, the type Keenan Wynn played in so many pictures. It makes me wonder what other oddities I'll discover as I watch more Reagan movies. I guess it just goes to show that you should never listen to the pundits.