The Outcasts of Poker Flat

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.

Why did they mix the storyline and characters from two very good Bret Harte stories:1) The Outcasts of Poker Flat and 2) The Luck of Roaring Camp? It's confusing and makes this movie suck.

The Outcasts of Poker Flats (1937)

** (out of 4)

Decent version of a couple Bret Harte stories has been told many times over the years including a 1919 version by John Ford. This one here features Preston Foster playing John Oakhurst, a gambler working out West when the gold rush struck. He's got the biggest business in town but things start to change when a teacher (Jean Muir) and a preacher (Van Heflin) show up. The story itself wasn't too original but I found the performances to be so great that they made the film worth viewing. Foster is extremely good in the lead because he really makes one believe the character development that he goes through. I thought the actor managed to do the more action packed scenes well and he made you believe that he was this tough gambler who really didn't care about anyone but himself. Muir is also extremely good in her part and she and Foster has some great chemistry that leaps off the screen. Heflin easily steals the film as the young preacher who shows up hoping to change this rather dirty town. The supporting cast includes nice work from Virginia Weidler, Si Jenks, Al St. John and Billy Gilbert. I think the biggest problem with the film is the direction of Christy Cabanne who simply never makes it too interesting. Visually the film is quite flat and a lot of the emotion that the story is going for never comes off and this is especially true during the final minutes. Still, the performances are so good that fans of the actors will still want to check this out.

Preston Foster is a tough saloon owner who must deal with a changing town which doesn't want him anymore. Central to his personal dilemma is his foster daughter "Luck", born on the eve of the first strike in a gold rush, and the new schoolmarm in town, to whom he has become attached. Some crisp dialogue, interesting use of close-ups in shootouts prefigures Italian style of 30 years later. Lackluster photography in the literalist RKO mode. Heflin appears as a town minister who's determined to be fair to Foster regardless of his occupation and their penchant for the same woman.

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.