This was called a disaster and curtailed Preston Sturges's Hollywood career, partly to blame is a direct surrealism -- the chubby blonde moppet learning about gunmanship from grandpa is then seen in jail as Betty Grable in a scarlet gown -- that remains unappreciated. The crane shot which follows the chanteuse as she arms herself and seeks her "long drink of ink" lover (Cesar Romero) in the saloon's upper floor while singing "Every Time I Meet You" shows the technique Sturges had learned, the ruckus that follows, with Grable's jealous bullet finding a spot in the judge's (Porter Hall) ass, shows the uproarious slapstick he never stopped loving. ("Maybe he forgot my name in the excitement," the heroine says. "In letters of fire, he remembers your name! Letters of fire! Nine feet high!" the sheriff booms.) She escapes in a schoolmarm's blue frock, her sidekick (Olga San Juan) wraps herself in an Indian blanket; the tiny town welcoming them offers Rudy Vallee's clueless gallantry in one corner, and the raucous cretinism of Sterling Holloway and Danny Jackson in the other. This travesty of the Old West continuously refreshes itself with great profusions of grotesqueries, dilating My Little Chickadee for the benefit of Raising Arizona and doing it all in the Fox back lot of Ford, Wellman, and King. The picture might in a way be Sturges's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, not so much a lament for the end of the West but for the end of the 1940s, when the auteur's brand of lunacy soared -- members of his stock company appear like phantoms, the last hurrah is a shootout packed with chaos, resurrections, and gags perdu (a dreamlike effect is achieved by shooting the same cowpoke off a roof four times in a row), kissing off an era while gazing ahead to Frank Tashlin and Mel Brooks. Vallee: "We mustn't be ridiculous." Grable: "I don't mind!" With Hugh Herbert, Margaret Hamilton, Al Bridge, El Brendel, Chester Conklin, J. Farrell MacDonald, and Mary Windsor.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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