Wild Bill Hickok Rides

The combination of the title of this film with the name "Constance Bennett" (sophisticated cosmopolitanism personified) is mildly startling but all is well. Basically it's a standard action-packed, fast-paced feature along the lines of Universal's 1942 remake of "The Spoilers," wherein a glamorous chanteuse accompanied by an African-American maid relocates to a dirty frontier town and finds herself caught between a bad guy and a good guy, in this case Warren William as a crooked city slicker and Bruce Cabot as the legendary titular character. Bennett dominates every scene she's in because the camera loves her and she shines in her feisty no-nonsense role, inhabiting Orry-Kelly's costumes to a tee and doing justice to a song called "The Lady Got a Shady Deal" by M. K. Jerome and Charles Newman. The supporting cast includes familiar old reliables such as Ward Bond, Walter Catlett, Howard Da Silva and J. Farrell MacDonald, with Betty Brewer excellent as the young daughter of a rancher up against the outlaws. The scenes alternate between fast-talking dialogues bursting with plot points to raucous crowd scenes, shoot-outs, and horse gallopings ranging from the Chicago fire of 1871 (which sets the plot in motion) to a lynch mob, a dam burst and a cattle stampede. A breezy old fashioned entertainment.