The Outcasts of Poker Flat

Bret Harte's classic story about a gambler/saloon owner in the Gold Rush days in California has had many adaptations to the big and small screen. This one starring Preston Foster, Jean Muir and Van Heflin is a good, albeit elaborated telling of the tale.

Preston Foster is our lead character, he owns the local saloon in a rip roaring mining camp in gold rush California. But times they are a changin'. He recognizes it too, Foster even goes so far as to sponsor the building of a church and a new parson in the person of Van Heflin comes to be its pastor.

A new schoolmarm comes as well and Jean Muir evokes the interest of both Foster and Heflin. Like John Wayne and James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Foster and Heflin represent the old and new west.

Unlike Vera Miles in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Muir's choice is kind of forced on her when one of them dies. Who will it be?

The Outcasts of Poker Flat also has a fine performance by young Virginia Weidler as Foster's foster daughter. It's really for her that Preston realizes change in the west is inevitable.

This version of The Outcasts of Poker Flat is a an unpretentious telling of a classic tale by a great American writer.

Preston Foster plays a saloon owner who takes in a child after she is born. Unfortunately, her mother died in childbirth. He uses her because he sees her as a source of good luck. But she begins to turn hard. Poker Flat is one of those Western towns that has lost its soul. Bad guys run free and Foster's saloon is their watering hole and a source of gambling. Soon a minister and a teacher show up and the little girl is plucked from her safe haven and put in a school. In the sappy movie world of the thirties, Foster falls for the school teacher and the minister tries to settle things down. Sadly, for Foster, he incurs the wrath of the people. The conclusion is right out of the single minded moralist's handbook. This has an outstanding cast, but the story is quite simplistic, even though it is based on a Brett Harte story.

The second of the four filmings of Bret Harte's best-known Gold Rush mining story was mostly shot in a saloon set with many closeups. Virginia Weidler (who would play Katherine Hepburn's younger sister in "The Philadelphia Story") prefigures Tatum O'Neal's Oscar-winning performance in "Paper Moon" as the cardsharp devoted to the gambler John Oakhurst, suavely played by Preston Foster. Van Heflin was surprisingly (to me anyway) handsome but already very earnest here as the parson. The good girl they both want is played with some spunk by Jean Muir and the partner pining for Oakhurst by Margaret Irving. The film looks good (credit cinematographer Robert De Grasse) but lacks the sparks of Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart in "Destry Rides Again." As in that film, the virtuous hero is not a goody-goody and is slow to resort to violence.

Never read the Bret Harte novel on which this is based, but it must read better than it transfers to the screen. It was hard to build up any sympathy for any of the players as the film is very stagey and plays like a filmed play. It is poorly written and I squirmed in my chair at some of the dialogue mouthed by some of Hollywood's best character actors.

I'm trying to think of a reason to recommend this movie and I can't think of one, apart from the performance by little Virginia Weidler as an orphan brought up by a saloon keeper. Can't recall having heard the name of the director before but he's probably a Poverty Row director unaccustomed to working with better talent. My rating is due to a lack of interest in the story and inability to generate feeling for the characters. Not worth your trouble, even at only 68 minutes.

I caught this on TCM the other night, it's short so it doesn't bore you too much I suppose. It's just an average flick. Nothing great, nothing awful, but it lags quite a bit for a film that isn't much more than an hour in length. Preston Foster isn't that great of an actor, so when he has the lead role in a film you find yourself getting a bit bored, Jean Muir didn't impress me much either for someone that was supposed to be such a great stage actress. Maybe she was better suited to the stage than to the screen. I found her dull too. The only high points of this film were Virginia Weidler and Van Heflin. So if you are dying to see Van when he was young and cute, check it out.