Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven

Diana Lynn is great as usual a year or so before her role as Irma's best friend in My Friend Irma. She carries the story quite well and it is worth seeing. I agree with another poster that the music is terrible but there isn't much of it and really it's only the music at the beginning that is that bad. It's a cute story and could have been better but still an enjoyable way to spend 76 minutes. It does have some good moments and lots of familiar faces, some you may not be able to put a name to but will recognize from other old movies. I won't go into the whole plot since that has already been covered very nicely but it is well worth your time to watch this. Since it has fallen into Public Domain you can see it at internetarchives.

Eddie Tayloe's grandfather leaves him six thousand dollars and the money belt it came in, freeing Tayloe to leave his dull newspaper job in Texas and move to New York to become a playwright. Along the way, his car breaks down and a girl walking along the highway asks for a lift. It turns out she's a nice girl, named Perry, running away from a job at a gasoline station. Soon they're off to New York together, but part ways once they arrive. Time passes and Eddie is failing to sell his play; Perry is failing to find a job. Odd circumstances, involving an old pickpocket named Mandy (Florence Bates), bring them together again. Three starchy sisters (including Irene Ryan and Margaret Hamilton) renting a room, a bartender named Mike, and a sleepy old immigrant (Michael Chekhov) running a mechanical menagerie all play parts in this romantic comedy.

William Castle, before his days of making gimmick-laden shockers, directed this unfunny script, straining to be zany and eccentric, and ending up dull. Guy Madison as Eddie is very handsome but stolid. Diana Lynn as Perry fares a little better, but her affectedly odd character thwarts her efforts. Florence Bates comes off the best. The movie is bad but not unbearable, if you want to see it for the supporting cast, which includes William Frawley, Jesse White and Lionel Stander.

Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven should by all accounts been a winner with the wonderful cast of character players that inhabit this film in support of young leads Guy Madison and Diana Lynn. But for whatever reason the film both in its quiet humor and some uproarious belly laugh humor just doesn't quite gel.

Future horror film director William Castle was in charge of this small independent production released by United Artists. Madison is a writer on a Dallas newspaper who's left a legacy of $6000.00 by his grandfather so he decides to go to New York and try his hand at writing a play. Along the way he picks up hitchhiker Diana Lynn and the two go to New York. Finding Manhattan a bit pricey even then, the two wind up staying in Brooklyn. Madison in a small hotel and Lynn with an adopted 'mother' Florence Bates in an apartment which she rents from three spinster sisters, Irene Ryan, Margaret Hamilton, and Moyna McGill.

Other than those I've mentioned such outstanding players as James Dunn, Jesse White, Clem Bevans, James Burke, Michael Chekhov, William Frawley and Lionel Stander are all here. Audie Murphy makes his screen debut in the beginning of the movie as a copy boy on Madison's paper and his scene is with Madison. That alone should make any devoted old film fan want to see Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven, but for the most part these folks are subdued in their characterizations.

And like a much better film It Happened In Brooklyn from the year before there is nary a mention of the Brooklyn Dodgers or Ebbetts Field. That's almost sacrilege.

You might want to look at Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven just to see this fabulous cast. But I think you'll walk away disappointed.

Secretary Diana Lynn and playwright Guy Madison (both from Texas) meet on their way to New York. Due to a misunderstanding Lynn mistakes Madison for a bank robber and tries to keep him from being found out by the police. Posing as his sister she finds a pick pocket in the subway and enlists her as their mother. Plot device shifts quickly to Lynn finding a job at a riding academy (mechanical animals) and Madison failing as a playwright (mechanical acting). An unfunny script, confusing scenes, terrible direction and an annoying soundtrack hinder this below-average B-film despite the likeability of a stellar cast of character actors: William Frawley ("I Love You"), Margaret Hamilton ("The Wizard of Oz"), Lionel Stander ("Hart to Hart"), Irene Ryan ("The Beverly Hillbillies"), and Jesse White (the original "Maytag Repairman") to name just a few. Even Audie Murphy appears in a bit part! Diana Lynn is her usual perky self (looking terrific) and some of the situations are wacky, (just not very funny). For Lynn fans and nostalgic value (though the film looks and sounds like 1930 instead of 1948!) the film can grow on you after a while.

Fits and starts is no way to engage a film spectator. Undivided attention is volunteered and not guaranteed. Clearly with Texas-Brooklyn Castle and the producers forgot these tenets of spectatorship. The long talks in the car had me paying attention to the rear projection in hopes of a bit of action. Although, dry at first these talks later became more interesting through developing the characters aptly. That being said, characterization was ambiguous. I feel that many reviewers of this film will be more forgiving than myself because of how "gosh-darn" cute the couple was. Diana Lynn did play her character very well. If the film story has relevance it is mostly anachronistic in nature. There are plot digressions and long drawn out scenes that do little for forwarding the story. Some mobile framing creeps in, but for the most part Castle is doing nothing special to foster spectator interest. Coney Island makes an appearance again, but unlike in When Strangers Marry there is no creatively edited montage sequence to accompany the fun fair. Margaret Hamilton also makes an appearance but is effectively side-lined rendering her casting value nil. Castle would not make the same mistake when directing her in 13 Ghosts many years later. If you have other things to do, you can either not watch this film, or simply keep it running in the background.