Gold Rush Maisie

Gold Rush Maisie finds Ann Sothern as the good hearted show girl from Brooklyn going out west with a family that looks remarkably like Joads of Oklahoma. All that was missing was Henry Fonda.

In fact the subject matter was just like The Grapes Of Wrath. Uprooted farmers moving about the country looking for odd jobs in crop picking. Only here rumors of a gold strike are sending a bunch of them west to the Arizona desert. After a bit of kindness on Maisie's part, she hooks up with the Davis family which consists of parents John F. Hamilton, Mary Nash and kid Virginia Weidler, Scotty Beckett and an infant.

All the same problems that John Ford so graphically illustrated and John Steinbeck so graphically wrote about are present in Gold Rush Maisie. Pity that no one with a head as level as Maisie's was around in The Grapes Of Wrath. Many social problems would be solved.

Who'd have thought a film of social significance would have come from the Maisie series, but it did.

Well, it wasn't Alaska but Arizona where Maisie Ravier winds up next in MGM's third film of 10 for the blonde adventuress. While Arizona does have a history of gold mining, I don't know if there ever was another rush around 1940 as this film portrays. But that's the setting for "Gold Rush Maisie."

Enroute for another job singing in the Hula Parlor Café in Truxton, Arizona, Maisie's car breaks down. That leads to a night with a very unhospitable Bill Anders and his sidekick, and then to an adventure with a horde of prospectors who come in search of quick riches. These are mostly families that travel the farm planting and harvesting cycles in the Western states.

Maisie helps the folks set up a tent camp and file their claims, and in the end Anders melts a little. Some good drama and good neighborliness in this film. Ann Sothern continues to please audiences, and Lee Bowman is the grouchy Anders who finally softens up. The rest of the cast all are very good.

There's more drama than comedy in this film. Here are the better funny lines.

Maisie Ravier, "When I first saw you, I thought you were a stinker. Now I've changed my mind. You're not that good."

Maisie Ravier, "I'm not really ignorant - just uneducated."

Maisie Ravier, "As I look back on it, you've been awfully, awfully kind, in a sort of nasty way."

Back in the old big studio days MGM didn't send their expensive cast and crews out on location if they could possibly keep them back home on the Culver City lot, especially if the story was set in the Arizona desert as this one is. This 1940 studio-bound production is a curiosity: full of phony sound-stage sets pretending to be exteriors, obvious painted backdrops and fuzzy process shots. Ann Southern and Virginia Weilder even have a big sister-little sister talk while walking on a treadmill as a process-shot desert background is projected in the background. No production shot today could get away with all this fakery. On the plus side, the good-hearted screenplay co-written by Mary C. McCall, Jr, president of the Screen Writer's Guild, is one of the few scripts, other than "The Grapes of Wrath," to have dealt sympathetically with the plight of Dust-bowl farm families who moved west in search of a better life.

Maisie (Ann Sothern) heads west where she helps a poor family trying to strike it rich as prospectors. Sothern is as delightful as ever. Lee Bowman is fine in yet another crappy male lead role in this series. For some reason they always paired Maisie up with jerks. Maybe so people wouldn't complain when she moved on to another guy in the next movie. Slim Summerville is great as Bowman's friend. He does some classic double takes. Virginia Weidler is likable as the little girl who takes a shine to Maisie. Rest of the cast includes Scotty Beckett, Mary Nash, Irving Bacon, John F. Hamilton, and Eddy Waller.

Another enjoyable Maisie movie. Not the best but solid. The Maisie-meets-the-Joads element is nice. One odd moment that stood out to me was when Maisie told the family she's helping that she took a swing at a guy once for daring to call her a gold digger, followed by awkward nervous laughter from the family. Such a weird scene.

The movie may not have done much for comedic Maisie, but it' a worthy reflection of Depression era straits. I like the way Maisie's slowly drawn into the Davis family plight. They're a hard-scrabble family who've lost their farm, along with thousands of others, and are now living hand to mouth. The city-bred Maisie meets up with them as they along with other dispossessed farmers are traveling as part of a rumored gold rush. Though separated at first by a cultural contrast, Maisie's drawn into the family by the common humanity their plight represents, especially by winning little Jubie Davis (Weidler). Together, they share their meager money, along with hopes of a gold strike that will lift their fortunes.

Though MGM has hired a big crowd of extras and costumed them in appropriately seedy clothes, Maisie still stands out. But what about those tacky exteriors that fairly shout studio sound stage. Why make the costuming so realistic, then background them with such outdoor phoniness. After all, this is MGM. At times, Sothern's a little shrill for my taste, but manages to remain likable, while actor Bowman as the reluctant benefactor makes for a churlish and unusual leading man. Too bad little Weidler is largely forgotten. She made for a charmingly plain-faced youngster, without being cutesy. Anyway, the overall result is a curious combination of Depression era drama and Maisie type spunk minus the series' usual laughs. So, fans of the series may find this entry too pointed for their liking. But I enjoyed it for its strong moral and as a reflection of the desperate times.

(In passing-- My dad owned a Colorado gold mine many years ago, and I remember as a boy how eagerly he awaited assay office results so he would know where next to tunnel. In fact, with a few notable exceptions gold in its natural state is unrecognizable. Instead, it's blended into ore that must then be tested for its gold content. So the movie's element of suspense is not fictional.)