Le mariage est pour demain

Alan Dwan does a good job of directing, glorious color photography by John Alton and editing by James Leicester, and a twisty script, all further buoyed up by strong acting from Payne, Reagan, Fleming, Gray and Leo Gordon as sheriff.

The friendship between the two male leads is particularly convincing.

Certainly deserves watching - and not just once! 7/10.

John Payne plays Tennessee, a very successful gambler in the old west. It seems he's made some enemies and one of them tries to have him shot in the back. Fortunately for Tennessee, 'Cowpoke' (Ronal Reagan) is in town and sees the murder about to occur...and he intervenes. The two soon become friends. However, Tennessee can't believe Cowpoke is going to marry Goldie, as she's a cold-hearted money grubber and prostitute. But his new friend will hear none of it, so Tennessee decides to expose her for what she is by offering to marry her instead and take her to San Francisco...where he promptly dumps her. Naturally Cowpoke is angry. What will this do to their friendship? And how does Duchess (Rhonda Fleming) fit into all this? And why is there a lynch mob trying to hang them later in the movie?

Overall, this is a modest little western. Not great by any standard but it's different enough to make it worth your time.

Tennessee's Partner is directed by Allan Dwan and collectively adapted to screenplay by Milton Krims, D.D. Beauchamp, Teddi Sherman and Graham Baker from a short story written by Bret Harte. It stars John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Ronald Reagan and Coleen Gray. Music is by Louis Forbes and cinematography by John Alton.

We are in a gold mining town in California and Tennessee (Payne) is an excellent poker player operating out of Elizabeth 'Duchess' Farnham's (Fleming) bordello. But when you are so good at cards you make enemies fast and Tennessee is only saved from being killed by the intervention of a stranger named Cowpoke (Reagan). The two men quickly become friends, but that friendship is sorely tested when Cowpoke's intended bride to be turns out to be a no good gold digger whom Tennessee knows well.

Producer Benedict Bogeaus once again assembles the principals that made the excellent Silver Lode the previous year. Dwann directs Payne while Alton photographs and Forbes drips his Western flavoured music over the top of things. Although this is not in the same league as Silver Lode, it's a hugely enjoyable movie in spite of adhering to a formula so rife in B Westerns of the 50s. The plot has enough going for it to keep it from ever feeling lazy, at its heart is a friendship under pressure from matters of the heart, but there is also gold in them thar hills, and with that also comes greed and irrational behaviour. With all hostile roads leading to Payne's gambling anti-hero.

The friendship between Tennessee and Cowpoke is very engaging. Tennessee has no friends, his line of work and his womanising ways have ensured that is the case, but Cowpoke is an amiable fella who only judges what he sees at first hand, and Tennesse welcomes this with open arms. But Cowpoke is gullible as well, especially where viper in the nest Goldie (Gray) is concerned. With Payne making Tennessee calm and slick, and Dwan able to get a very human aw-shucks performance out of Reagan for Cowpoke, they are interesting polar opposites, but still it's very easy for the audience to care what happens to them. While Fleming's Duchess is beautiful and brainy, and she's the glue holding firm while the town comes apart.

The French Region 2 DVD is not a perfect print, but it has transfered well enough to see the benefit of having John Alton on photography. Filmed out of Iverson Ranch, the film barely sets foot out of the confines of the town, so this is all about close character filming and sumptuous Technicolor lenses, and here Alton excels. The costuming (Gwen Wakeling) is first rate, especially for Fleming, who gets to don a number of knockout dresses, with a red one eye poppingly gorgeous, and the set design for the bordello/gambling den is wonderfully ornate. So with a good blend of quality aesthetics and weighty plotting, Tennessee's Partner easily shakes of its "B" budget beginnings to become a safe recommendation to the Western lover. 7.5/10

John Payne is a gambler living in a California gold mining town. Rhonda Fleming owns the local bordello. When a guy who's upset with Payne tries to kill him, Ronald Reagan steps in and saves him. An uneasy friendship forms, made more uneasy by the relationship between Payne and Reagan's fiancé Collen Gray.

I can't say I thought much of this film. There's a bizarre, cheap unreality to it that I found constantly distracting. Fleming's "bordello" located in a pretty small frontier town has utterly palatial interiors that feel like sets borrowed from a film about Louis XIV. The gambling loss that Payne and random guy argue about is said to be $12,000, which would be well over a quarter of a million dollars in today's currency. (It's not clear how anyone could casually lose that much during an evening's poker game.)

All this odd cheapness ended up amounting to a film I stopped paying much attention to. Reagan and Payne seemed to work it all out in the end.

Reagan's character is named "Cowpoke".

The come on for this film was the boast that the West was like this film. I somehow do not believe that, but this is pure Hollywood at its best and its worst. Allan Dwan has a reputation among film buffs and clearly he directs well, but the plot is mainly set in a house for girls who want to get the best out of men. Rhonda Fleming looks her beautiful self and her acting is not bad either. Gamblers congregate there including John Payne who doesn't seem to like women very much in this role. His partner is someone who got him out of a dodgy situation, and that is Ronald Reagan who in my opinion cannot really act. Coleen Gray is bland as Reagan's love interest, and of course she is no good. This foursome play out the fantasy of the West and no doubt many lapped it up. A film for those who want to see glamour and a little violence and no one has a speck of dirt on them.