"The Wildcat" (1925) is a modern (20s) Western that really is about a fledgling boxer, Gordon Clifford, who can't keep his eyes off of the ladies. Well, he loses a major fight, and his manager, Barney Taggart, takes him to a ranch for intense training. Clifford's already met the ranch owner's niece, Charlotte Pierce, and they seem to be very mutually attracted. Meanwhile, the relatively new ranch foreman, Ervin Reynard, is actually a robber who, in conjunction with a couple of others, has stolen a large cache of very valuable jewels from a train. The film is loaded with underlying comedy, though it's played somewhat straight. The other main character is Hooper Phillips in his only known film, playing Charcoal the valet, a black lackey whose character is every racial stereotype of the comic black man of the early days of film to near 1970s in the medium. He IS funny, but only at the expense of racial derogation at its worst. Too bad, because Hooper Phillips steals the show! He's an early Mantan Moreland, and equally talented. I've never heard of any of the actors in the film, but the film plays relatively well. Lasting only 52 minutes, for a forgotten 20s silent comic Western with some good antics this isn't bad. One last note: the star, Gordon Clifford, is best remembered today as a popular song writer, and he combined talents with such noted songsters as Nacio Herb Brown and Harry Barris and wrote "I Surrender Dear", "Paradise", "Sahara Nights", and several others that were quite respected in their day. Clifford only made eight feature films. He died in a traffic accident in Las Vegas in 1968 at the age of 66. Charlotte Pierce married musician and talent scout "Solly" Baiano in 1926, the year after this film, and she retired from films. One of their sons married singer Jaye P. Morgan. IMDb has her death INCORRECTLY listed as 1950. She died in 1996 at the age of 92!
