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| Eddie Albert as Daniel Bone. |
I fully expected
The Dude Goes West (1948) to be a knock-off of Bob Hope's
Paleface movies. To my surprise, it turned to be a bright, original Western comedy that opts for clever humor instead of broad gags.
Eddie Albert stars as a Daniel Bone, a Brooklyn gunsmith who decides to relocate out West so he can grow his business. His destination is the dubiously-titled Arsenic City, which we later learn is overrun by notorious badmen like the Pecos Kid and Texas Jack Barton. Daniel may be a tenderfoot, but he is also a "great reader" and his book knowledge will come in handy during his frontier adventures.
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| Gale Storm as Liza Crockett. |
During his almost Ozian journey to Arsenic City, Daniel befriends several people who will play a significant role in his exploits: A grizzled cowboy (James Gleason) with a fondness for playing poker; Texas (Barton MacLane), a distrusting cowpoke with a mysterious bullet in his leg; and a whole tribe of Paiute Indians. He also falls for a young woman (Gale Storm), a fellow Easterner trying to locate her dead father's gold mine. Of course, the Pecos Kid (Gilbert Roland) and tough, cigar-smoking saloon owner Kiki Kelly (Binnie Barnes) also aim to stake a claim to that goldmine.
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| Veteran character actor James Gleason. |
Veterans like Gleason and MacLane excel in their well-written parts, but it's Eddie Albert that claims the spotlight. Despite a long acting career dating back to the 1939 comedy
Brother Rat, Albert never achieved stardom as a lead actor. Still, he earned Best Supporting Actor nominations for
Roman Holiday (1953) and
The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and became a legitimate TV star in
Green Acres (1965-71) and later
Switch (1975-78). He's at his best as the resourceful, determined gunsmith in
The Dude Goes West.
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| Jock Mahoney as Yancy. |
Naturally, it helps when you have a fine script courtesy of the husband-and-wife team of Richard Sale and Mary Loos (niece of Anita Loos). Instead of one-liners, they opt for situational humor. The film's funniest scene may be the one in which Texas learns that Daniel is a sharpshooter. When the outlaw marvels how a greenhorn can be such a good shot, Daniel replies casually that it's a handy skill to have when your profession is repairing firearms. (Note that Daniel's pipe turns into a derringer; ten years later, Sale and Loos would create the cult TV series
Yancy Derringer about a Southern gentleman who also carried a derringer...or two.)
Speaking of television, it's a shame that Albert and the writers didn't revive
The Dude Goes West as a TV series. I could easily imagine weekly episodes revolving around Daniel Bone's exploits in and around Arsenic City. I certainly would have watched.
Here's a clip from
The Dude Goes West. You can view it full-screen on the Classic Film & TV Cafe's YouTube Channel. You can also stream the entire movie at
warnerarchive.com.