La reine du rodéo

A typical rodeo film. fistfights, bronc riding. ten gallon hats. Stars mamie Van Doren and Jeff Richards. Van Doren has a VERY interesting bio on imdb, if you have a couple minutes... makes for a fun read. pretty x-rated. Richards had a much quieter life; had started as a baseball player, but moved into acting after getting an injury. Some songs sung in the nightclubs. maybe some of them were actually sung by VanDoren. Arthur Hunnicutt is the sidekick. Hunnicutt was oscar nominated for Big Sky... always played the western character, and usually with the big beard. When Kelly (Richards) meets interloper Liz (Carol Ohmart), things get tense. Will that put an end to Jackie? (VanDoren) This Warner Brothers film has many similarities to UA's The Misfits (Gable, Monroe), but Reckless was first! Misfits would come a couple years later, with bigger stars, but the stories are almost the same. Reckless written by Richard Landau... had started out by writing short documentaries; worked up to films and then television series. little bits and pieces of various shows. Directed by Howard Koch; had some pretty big achievments in his life: was president of the Academy, was head of production at Paramount Studios, and was VP of Sinatra Enterprises. not a bad life!

This is a pretty good feature about some rodeo competitors and its best assets are a typically amusing hayseed performance by Arthur Hunnicutt, some sharp black and white rodeo competition photography by Joseph Biroc and Mamie van Doren's shiny blouse.

A good script allows the actors to give good performances, including Miss van Doren, who was often used as little more than a peroxide job and a large, pointy bra. A sense of anomie suffuses the production as everyone grabs a few happy moments in a tough, dying world. The following year's THE MISFITS, starring another pneumatic platinum blonde is acclaimed, but this unassuming second feature makes the same points and has more range.

Kelly Cobb (Jeff Richards) is a cowboy who travels the rodeo circuit. This All-American hunk might resemble Clark Kent, but he knows his way around the ladies. Jackie Adams (Mamie Van Doren) is a trick rider who finds time to sing in the dance halls of the cow-towns on the tour. With her platinum hair and her voluptuous figure, she attracts men even when she is not trying--frequently requiring Kelly to rescue her.

With its rock and roll music and its obligatory fistfights, "Born Reckless" might be another vehicle for Elvis Presley. Although most of the music is performed by someone "on stage", note that Van Doren sings one ballad (backed by an orchestra and choir) on a front porch, lamenting the fact that it's difficult to be patient when a girl is waiting for her man to settle down. So, this film has some elements of a musical.

It also has rodeo stock footage, a lame ending, and a plot as predictable as a poolside fight. Ostensibly it's a story about dreams for the future, but it's mostly a chance for viewers to ogle the two stars. The story is not compelling, but--surprisingly--Mamie's voice sounds pretty good in a couple of her numbers.

Amateur night at the rodeo. As barroom singer Jackie Adams, sort of a fashion-plate cowgirl (her western hat tilted to one side), Mamie Van Doren is dressed to kill, peroxided and puckered for a kiss that never comes. This lady knows her way around a photogenic pose but, unfortunately, she has no personality; when asking someone a simple question, she squints her eyes and quivers her lips as if trying to comprehend the theory of relativity. Van Doren is so stilted on-screen that she's hardly even a presence, yet the drooling cowboys in her path don't seem to notice. Mamie hitches up with a hunky rodeo cowboy and his grizzled cohort, but the so-called screenplay isn't interested in the (often crooked) rodeo circuit. What the filmmakers really want to do is get their sexy starlet into compromising positions (which she then squirms her way out of). Joseph F. Biroc's cinematography is compromised by poor stock shots of rodeo crowds (which must have pained him), and every performance leans toward the extreme: extremely wooden or extremely hammy. Either way, the picture is extremely awful. * from ****

Born Reckless has 50s sex kitten Mamie Van Doren filling out those tight rodeo cowgirl outfits with the bulges in all the right places. She sings and does some trick riding and she's an itinerant performer who makes the acquaintance of Jeff Richards and Arthur Hunnicutt.

These folks are small circuit performers who do it for the love of it. The money is nice though when you win and it hurts just as bad when a bull bucks you off at Cheyenne Frontier Rodeo or at one of these small town events.

Richards enters many events but he can somehow never put together enough money at once so he can buy a piece of land and settle down. And he's not getting any younger. Van Doren has some competition from rich rodeo groupie Carol Ohmart as well.

Some familiar western faces and some forgettable country songs are in this film enough to qualify it as a musical. Not sure if Van Doren's numbers were dubbed or not.

Born Reckless is not up there with really good rodeo films like Junior Bonner or The Lusty Men. But it's still good entertainment cheaply made.