Texas Lady

Claudette Colbert is wonderful as Prudence, a woman who has to go to a little country town that's seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where she has inherited the local paper. The men about town are naturally surprised to find that she's a woman, and don't exactly welcome her spritely ways and 'interference' with 'their' paper. Luckily for Prudence, the card shark that she slayed in New Orleans comes to her rescue, which is nice of him after the beating she gave him in their game of poker - one of the film's most enjoyable scenes. Not a wonderful movie, but not bad, and pretty good for a Western.

Texas Lady marked Claudette Colbert's one and only western and I think this RKO film was probably something that they might have had Barbara Stanwyck in mind for. Colbert though she gave a decent performer really is not a western type. I suspect she wanted at least one on her film resume and took Texas Lady which was an inflated B film.

After learning the game of poker for years, Colbert takes Barry Sullivan on and beats him handily. Sullivan, a gentleman riverboat gambler had cleaned out her father who had embezzled money and then lost his ill gotten gains at the poker table and promptly killed himself. After restoring the family honor, Claudette goes to Texas where she's inherited a newspaper.

The paper is the paid for rag of the owners of the local Ponderosa, Ray Collins and Walter Sande. Claudette starts agitating for a railroad spur to come to town. But that will mean less dependency on the cattle barons and new people settling. The plot here has certain similarities to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Claudette also gets some attention from fast draw deputy Gregory Walcott who kills a couple of small ranchers in the service Collins and Sande.

In the meantime Sullivan comes to town as his reputation is shot to all heck on the riverboat scene. Being both southerners to the manor born they find a lot in common.

Texas Lady was a decent enough western, but it looks like it was edited considerably down and a lot of the story doesn't really make sense. And Colbert is just not well cast in westerns. But her fans might like it. It sure is a far cry from the comedies she did in the Thirties and Forties.

>>Claudette Colbert looking far too old and matronly for the part of an ambitious small-town journalist and card sharp Colbert certainly doesn't look matronly in this film - she's just as slender and attractive as ever.

I've just attended the WIllimasburg Film Festival, which showed this film. It has great meaning for Gregory Walcott- it was his "breakthrough" role, and his wife was pregnant with his first child, which she gave birth to a week after the movie finished filming.

In Walcott's biography, Hollywood Adventures, he tells the story of how he first met Colbert, who was concerned that he was so much younger than she was. But if older leading men can be put in with actresses 20 years younger than them, than women should be able to get the same treatment.

It is a bit episodic, but fun nevertheless.

Prudence (Claudette Colbert) travels to an isolated Texas town where she has inherited the local paper. She finds the place ruled over by the two men who wrested the area from the Indians twenty-five years before, and it is clear they do not welcome her free-spirited intervention. Upon arriving there, the manager refuses to give up control of the newspaper, claiming that he has no rights to it. To recover what is hers, Prudence must ally herself with the least expected person, her support comes in the unexpected shape (Barry Sullivan) of the a card player whom she previously met in New Orleans, and whom she hates because he blames him for her father's death. Womanly Wiles New Her Weapons !. A Lady...till the fighting started...then...what a woman!. The pulse-beat of a great state pounds in each lusty scene!. When the cold-blooded cattle barons moved in...she taught the whole town how to fight...Texas style! They were giants until a soft-spoken lady cut them down to size!

Texas Lady went to the American director Tim Whelan (nightmare night) the last work in a big screen he directed. Likewise, it was also the last film for prestigious screenwriter and western expert Horace McCoy, who died after being released in the cinemas. Stars the French actress Claudette Colbert that was Oscarized in 1935 for¨It happened one night¨by Frank Capra . Colbert gives a nice acting as a strong-headed woman from the East inherits a newspaper in a small Texas town where the local cattle barons, who control the region, want her out of their hair. Next to her are two known actors in the genre Western: Barry Sullivan (The Last Straw) gambler she has just bested in New Orleans for her own family reasons.and Ray Collins who can be remembered as James W Gettys in the famous Orson Welles film Citizen Kane. Claudette Collbert is not the only one that has the famous Statue of Oscars, so that the artistic director Ray Rennahan also got the prize a double award with the films: ¨Gone with the wind¨and ¨Blood and sand¨. There's also a lot of familliar secondaries from the Forties and Fifities, such as: James Bell, Horace McMahon, Gregory Walcott , John Litel, Douglas Fowley, Don Haggerty, Walter Sande, among others.

The motion picture was professionally directed by Tim Whelan, but nothing special. His career began as a writer in Hollywood where he began working with Harold Lloyd. It was while living in England that he made his mark as a director. Directed more films in Britain than in his native country, often for BIP, Gainsborough and (most of his best output in the 1930s) Alexander Korda's London Films. He is best remembered for the colorful fantasy classic The Thief of Bagdad (1940). His career spans from silent films to the 1950s with several films such as Rage at dawn (1955) , Utopia (1951), This Was a Woman (1948) , Badman Territory (1946), Higher and Higher (1943) , The perfect gentleman (1935), The Murder Man (1935) , Safety Last! (1923), among others. Rating: 5.5/10. The motion picture will appeal to Claudette Colbert fans.

A rare opportunity to savour Ms Colbert in colour, that beautiful profile as usual shot throughout from the left; she still had what it took in her fifties to play an alpha female with a leading man nearly ten years her junior.