The Paleface

An enjoyable comedy western featuring the formidable, if different talents of its leads Bob Hope and Jane Russell. Hope plays his customary cowardy-custard character, a travelling dentist of all things named "Painless" Potter alongside Russell's mannish Calamity Jane as they seek to foil the baddies' nefarious plan to arm the Red Indians, but pay no attention to the plot, just like the two stars, and instead enjoy the fun romp they gleefully rampage through.

Filmed in glorious Technicolor, the film makes ample room for running gags, like Russell's hammer-like kisses and Hope getting pulled out of his wagon-chair every time he gees up the horses, but is best served by Hope and his ad-libs and one-liners (sample:- Hope trying to act tough at the bar - "Give me four fingers of red-eye - and throw in a thumb too!"). The funniest extended scene is probably when Hope and a hot-shot rival stalk each other around town before their shoot-out. The humour trails off somewhat in the last third when the comedy gets too cartoony and slapsticky but there's still some compensation as Russell's glacial heart melts towards her oafish husband.

Sure the treatment of the Red Indians / Native Americans is about as un-PC as you can get, but the real villains are the white guys and along the way Hope gets to sing the catchy singalong "Buttons and Bows". Popular enough to beget a sequel "Son Of Paleface" a few years, this is one of Hope's best comedies sans-Crosby and also demonstrated Russell's comedic talents at the same time.

The Paleface one of the funniest films Bob Hope ever did was a godsend to the career of Jane Russell. Take a look at her film credits and see how few there were during the Forties. She did The Outlaw which kept going in and out of release every time Howard Hughes re-edited it. She did a film called The Young Widow which she hated and was a box office flop and then The Paleface.

Although Howard Hughes kept messing around with The Outlaw and kept Russell off the screen for most of the Forties, the man did know about publicity and certainly kept her name before the public. But a movie star has to make movies. So even Hughes realized that and I'm sure he exacted a good price for Russell's services to Paramount for The Paleface.

Hope of course is his usual character. A recent graduate of a dentistry college, he's gone west to seek fame and fortune, Hope the schnook gets tangled up with the notorious Calamity Jane.

Of course Russell is Calamity Jane, she's being offered a pardon in order to trap some no good outlaws selling weapons to the Indians. When her contact is killed and she nearly is also, she picks up Hope and they get married and join a wagon train.

Of course the some of the funniest stuff in The Paleface when Russell does some fancy shooting and let's Hope take the credit for it, giving him an undeserved reputation for fearlessness. One of my favorite bits is when Iron Eyes Cody gets a hold of some of Hope's laughing gas and Hope thinks he's Russell behind a barrier.

Bob Hope got to introduce his second Oscar winning song in The Paleface, Buttons and Bows by the Paramount contract song writers, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. He sold a few records of it, but the real big hit was done by Dinah Shore. It's now become identified with Russell as well, but she sings it in Son of Paleface, not here.

This was Bob Hope's first trip to the American west in search of laughs and it was a successful expedition.

Jane Russell plays Calamity Jane who is offered pardon on a ten year sentence if she tracks down the culprits who are selling weapons to the Indians. She hitches up with a dim-witted dentist, Bob Hope, so that she can trick the bad guys into thinking that he is the federal agent tracking them down, instead of her. Hope is conned into thinking that he has killed a dozen or so Indians, in one of the funnier scenes. Hope is extremely funny in this comedy western as he struts his stuff through the old west. Most jokes hit their mark, and Russell is as much fun as Calamity Jane as well. The catchy Oscar winning tune "Buttons and Bows" is given a voice by Hope early in the film.

I'm not sure if it was intentionally spoofing The Paleface, or it was a rip-off, but The Court Jester borrowed plenty of gags and most of the storyline from Bob Hope's hilarious western. It also payed homage to plenty of other films, like The Adventures of Robin Hood, but look at the similarities to The Paleface: A hapless fool gets accidentally mistaken for an assassin and a spy, his brunette female companion is much tougher than him, and during a scene when he has to fight in a duel, he gets different pieces of advice and gets them all mixed up. Yes, that's right. Bob Hope gets, "He draws from the left, so lean to the right," mixed up with, "The wind's from the east so aim to the west," and, "He crouches when he shoots,so stand on your toes," in a hilarious build-up to the duel. Needless to say, if you love Danny Kaye's "pellet with the poison" scene, you need to rent The Paleface.

In addition to Bob Hope's hilarious antics and endless jokes about not getting any alone time with his lady love, Jane Russell stars as Calamity Jane in this western spoof. She's tough, pretty, and a master sharpshooter. I'll never understand why two years later, when the leading lady dropped out of the picture, Jane Russell wasn't cast in Annie Get Your Gun. And I'll certainly never understand why she wasn't cast in 1953's Calamity Jane. She could have easily been in both of those musicals!

You're going to have to get past some politically incorrect jokes, and the fact that "Buttons and Bows" won Best Song at the Oscars, but this is a very funny movie that will keep you laughing from start to finish.

Bob Hope is in his element in this type of role, here he plays a dopey dentist named Painless Peter Potter, he is the kind of dentist that pulls the wrong teeth and gets high on his own laughing gas. Here he manages to get involved with Calamity Jane {a positively smouldering Jane Russell} and a caper set around rouge Cowboys selling guns and dynamite to the Indians. After mistakenly being taken for a hero after repelling an Indian attack and killing a number of them during said attack, we are taken on this delightful journey as Potter the coward transforms himself into a bravado gun slinger whilst not realising it's actually Calamity pulling his strings and shooting the pistols. It's a smashing comedy that perfectly showcases Hope's immeasurable talent for delivering one liners, in fact few comedians in history can deliver a quip better than Hope could. The chemistry between Russell and Hope is as sharp as the writing, and to cap it all off we get the delightful song Buttons & Bows to hum along to, smashing uplifting comedy, 8/10.