Go West, Young Man is a delightful screwball comedy featuring an unlikely but happily cast trio of Mae West, Warren William, and Randolph Scott. Mae is a glamorous movie star, the idol of millions, stranded in a hick boarding house when her limo breaks down in the sticks. She passes time by putting her fleshy moves on the handsome mechanic, played by Scott, who in 1936 was still very young looking and not yet principally identified as a western star. But the hayseed mechanic is more interested in tinkering with electronic inventions than in either the sultry Mae or his forlorn fiancé (Margaret Perry), while Mae's manipulative and protective press agent William and the fiancé's old maid aunt (Elizabeth Patterson) do all in their considerable conniving powers to put the romance on the skids. They get a lot of help from a herd of wacky local yokels, all ga-ga over glamor queen and all harboring their own ridiculous dreams of getting into the movies.
While Screwball comedy is a genre of elusive definition, Go West, Young Man embodies most of the common elements -- romance all out of whack, a collection of goofy but likable characters, frenetic, sometimes slap-stick action, class satire, and witty, fast-delivery dialog -- all breaking off in unexpected directions, like the baseball pitch the genre is named after. This movie also features a couple of other devices often seen in other screw-ballers -- the hoity-toity dame stranded in the boonies, and the cops being called, usually by mistake, and coming in like gangbusters. Henry Hathaway, a director better known for his outdoor action pictures, brings it all together with style and good humor.
The Mae West phenomenon seems to be rather poorly understood by the modern generation. They just can't fathom how so much fuss could have been made over a plump, middle-aged dame with no class except for low class, and not even very pretty, except in an incredibly cheap way (which, unfortunately, appeals enormously to most of us guys). How could all those men throw themselves at her feet? Well, that's pretty funny. So is sex in general. And that was her whole point! She was a grotesque parody of the sex goddess. Mae wrote most of her own material including the screen play for Go West, Young Man. She satirized everyone, playboys, politicians, country bumpkins, and most of all herself! She does it better than ever in Go West, Young Man, but in this movie it is even funnier than most of her others, because the satire is more gentle. The rubes are made to seem ridiculously funny, yet also very human and likable. And Mae, herself, gets the sharpest barbs. If for no other reason, this movie is worth watching for the hilarious scene of the sullen, portly sex goddess sauntering toward the boarding house steps escorted by a throng of adoring hayseeds and their pigs! That, as with many of the other gags, gives me a chuckle again every time I think of it. Which is the true test of whether a comedy is funny!
Code or no code, Go West, Young Man is still a Mae West movie, but it manages to be good, (almost) clean fun. Top notch Old Hollywood entertainment.
