Senorita from the West (1945) Poster

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3/10
Harbinger Of Milli Vanilli
bkoganbing13 February 2009
Senorita From The West has to have one of the lamest premises for a movie plot I've ever heard. Remember that this is still the age of radio so what other merit than voice would someone bring to the airwaves.

But what we're asked to believe here is that Allan Jones who has a bad case of stage fright and mike fright serves as the real voice for good looking radio singer Jess Barker. Now how some radio station ever went for an arrangement like this is beyond me. Yet while screaming and swooning bobbysoxers are fainting in the studio audience at Barker's broadcast, it's Jones's voice that they're hearing coming from another microphone and fed into Barker's studio. Milli Vanilli had nothing on what these two guys were pulling.

But the real problems start when Bonita Granville who plays the title role in Senorita From The West comes east to seek fame and fortune and winds up as an elevator operator in the building where Barker/Jones broadcasts from. She's an orphan kid who's been raised by three old codgers, Oscar O'Shea, Fuzzy Knight, and George Cleveland. They dress like the rustics they are, but their gold mine has made them millionaires and they're going to see Granville gets a big leg up on her career.

Of course Granville like all the other girls falls for Barker even though she meets and likes Jones who calls himself Barker's 'secretary'. I think you can figure out the rest of this film.

After this film Allan Jones left Hollywood to concentrate on concert and nightclub and summer stock work. If this was an example of what he could expect from film work, no wonder he left. He would not make another film appearance in almost 20 years and his appearances after that were straight dramas.

Senorita From The West, buried in the vaults at Universal and should have stayed there.
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3/10
It ain't out west except for the first reel.
mark.waltz19 April 2019
Warning: Spoilers
The misleading title of this forgettable Universal programmer makes the viewer think that they are going to see a western musical or something similar. It's a waste of talent for the Oscar-nominated Bonita Granville ("These Three"), reduced to Universal programmers, and Allan Jones, who dubbed the voice of Dennis Morgan in the great Ziegfeld, singing "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" while Morgan lip synced. He is doing the same here for Jess Barker, suffering from stage fright but not too shy to fight the conceited Barker for Granville's affections.

For some reason, Granville has three adoptive fathers, owners of a western gold mine who push Granville to go east and end up following her there. The point of the gold mine is never established, other than to give aging character actors George Cleveland, Fuzzy Knight and Oscar O'Shea a scene or two to establish their characters.

The only amusing element of this immediately forgettable programmer is the presence of Danny Mummert (the "Blondie" series) as the kid who goes around bothering young couples on the street, hoping to get paid off to leave them alone. Universal's B musicals were a mixed bag, and the three old men are basically playing A variation of the type of roles that the Andrews Sisters had been playing in these films since the beginning of the 1940's. It is obvious as to how this is going to be resolved, and even then, it is a complete let down.
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