The Fighting Kentuckian

This movie is pure Republic Pictures B-movie all the way, with relatively low production values, Vera Ralston (girlfriend of the CEO) and lots of action. And this is not necessarily a bad thing (apart from the lousy acting by Ralston), as the movie is highly entertaining. So, if you just turn off your brain and enjoy, this is a terrific film. I particularly love seeing Oliver Hardy playing a rare supporting actor role very late in his career. Is he believable? Not in the least. But, he's funny and quite the sidekick to John Wayne. The plot, such as it is, involves Wayne falling for Cajun Ralston (a Swedish actress playing a Creole woman?!) and getting into a wide variety of scraps along the way. Not much more to it than that but it is so much fun, who cares?! I can forgive all this because the film is somehow charming and memorable.

By 1949 Laurel and Hardy were all but finished (we don't talk about 'Atoll K') but Oliver Hardy, always hard up, needed to work. Hence this unique but worthwhile turn as a genial Southron in George Waggner's middling-good oater.

John Wayne-- Republic's chief asset and now his own producer-- and Vera Hruba Ralston, its boss's wife-- were co-starring in a slightly unusual western. It is set in 1819, heyday of Andrew Jackson's 'manifest destiny' expansionism. French settlers in the Deepest South, Napoleonic exiles, were slogging it out with English-speakers for the ownership of a bit of Creole country.

Wayne and Hardy, attired like Davy Crocketts, are teamed as old Kentuckian pals, veterans of the Battle of New Orleans. Now they're on the loose in Alabama and (since this was still the gallant, humorous Wayne of post-'Stagecoach' vintage) assisting French settlers against larcenous land barons such as John Howard.

Contrary to what lazy film writers maintain, 'Repulsive Pictures', as some jaded employees called it, was never a pure Poverty Row outfit. By the late 1940s it was careful to keep Wayne's market value up by attention to production values, a policy which culminated in 'The Quiet Man'. Here gleaming photography by Lee Garmes and George Antheil's score enhance the Frenchified interest of the mise en scene, and there's a surfeit of plot. (Incidentally Vera Ralston is no worse than many a Maureen O'Sullivan either, despite the cries of uxoriousness against Herbert Yates, Mr Ralston.)

Once again the factor that lifted Wayne above the Audie Murphys and Randolph Scotts is visible abundantly: the charm and grace he cannot help exhibiting, even though he'd have knocked a man down for mentioning them. The lightness and assurance he projects makes it not crazy to compare him with Cary Grant-- who was also at his most beguiling when portraying embarrassment, despite his reputation for smoothness. It has kept many of Wayne's seemingly routine pictures fresh when more pompous major productions have long since become fossilised.

Hardy's main job is to inject slapstick or advise and admonish his chum when Wayne gets too romantic, but he is involved in the mechanics of the plot too. He does so well one feels that if 'Babe' had been less fond of the golf course and in better health, he could have followed many funny men before him into a second life as a character actor.

Used to equality in a double act, Hardy works well with Big John: there's a genuine warmth between them, since unlike too many comics Ollie does not try to dominate their interchanges. Nor does he use the broader schticks of his peerless partnership: he does not mutely appeal to the audience or speak in that slow, absurdly dignified way he uses to challenge Stan's stupidities. He is given business with hats, eats too much, twiddles his incongruously delicate fingers, falls in a river as in 'Way Out West'. But it's all done lightly; Willie Paine's a bit of a clown but not a gross buffoon.

Seeing Babe slugging and being slugged is novelty enough, and there is poignancy in his last shot: marching away at the wedding, as if bidding farewell unknowingly to his Hollywood career. It's an unexpected coda, a box office success to boot, and a heartwarming one after years stuck in unworthy programmers with Stan for Darryl F Zanuck.

In 1817, following a land-grant Act of Congress, written to aide Napoleon-supporters in the War of 1812, 340 French families settled on four townships in Alabama. They arrived in Mobile, Alabama on the ship "McDonough" and made their headquarters in a small community named "White Bluff." A year later, with the community developed into a thriving village by their labors, they renamed it "Demopolis," an ancient Greek name meaning "City of the People." These Napoleonic exiles chose not to give it a French name that would recall their native land.

These cultured colonists, from the drawing rooms and military heritage of the old French aristocracy, were likely the least-prepared of any of the immigrant groups who settled the American wilderness, and soon found themselves pioneering the rugged interior of Alabama with illiterate traders, squatters and Indians for their neighbors. They called themselves "The Association of French Emigrants for the Cullivation of the Vine and Olive", but their attempt at olive and grape culture was a complete failure. The Indians taught them how to grow corn and beans, but when they discovered that through a surveying error they inadvertently had built their city outside the chartered boundaries, they drifted away, either returning to France or settling in Mobile or New Orleans. But Napoleon was no great hand when it came to reading maps and recognizing boundaries, either.

Director/writer George Waggner took the surveying mistake and converted it to a land-grab scheme, threw in a motley group of rugged Kentucky militiamen, returning from the Battle of New Orleans, used the most diverse cast in any of the American-frontier films from Republic...and then tossed in ten pounds of plot into a five-pound container. Most of which worked. Aside from the thematic song, a traditional called "Kentucky Marching Song", in which he wrote new lyrics to go with George Anthiel's arrangement. Neither of which, apparently, spent much time on the writing or the arranging.

John Wayne plays a frontiersman, who partners up with Oliver Hardy! This seems strange at first, but they have a great rapport and act well together. Vera Ralston is the love interest, and while she's pretty, she's not a great actress and is merely passable in the role. There's lots of fighting and heroic action in this movie, and it's a way to pass an enjoyable hour or two. John is at his most charismatic here.

An American Western-comedy; A story set in Alabama, 1812, about a Kentucky trooper who makes a long journey homeward with his army confrère and becomes involved with a robber baron's plan to deprive hundreds of French army refugees of land promised by Congress, and he acts to prevent the villain's marriage to the daughter of a former French general. This is a routine Western with incessant chases and gunfire. The romance is stilted with no chemistry between John Wayne and Vera Ralston, who sounds more Czech than French. However, it is a boisterous distraction with sparkling photography, and the excellent comedy performances shine through its medicore storyline. John Wayne has screen presence, and his light humour complements the piece very well, never overshadowing Oliver Hardy's marvellous physical comedy, which is a treat to watch: two great light comedy performances. As an aside, though, Hardy is only slightly pugnacious here, which will feel muted in comparison to his high acclaim for his other pictures acting alongside Stan Laurel.