The Dude Goes West (1948)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Kurt Neumann

Writers:

Mary Loos (original screenplay) and
Richard Sale (original screenplay)

Release Date:

30 May 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Western

Tagline:

HE WAS A GOOD MAN...AMONG THE BAD! (original print media ad - all caps)

Plot:

Eastern gunsmith Daniel Bone goes out west to ply his trade, encounters a girl searching for the murderer of her father.

Plot Keywords:

Gold Mine | New York City | Train | Murderer | Bowery

Cast

Eddie Albert	...	Daniel Bone
Gale Storm	...	Liza Crockett
James Gleason	...	Sam Briggs
Gilbert Roland	...	Pecos Kid
Binnie Barnes	...	Kiki Kelly
Barton MacLane	...	Texas Jack Barton
Douglas Fowley	...	Beetle
Tom Tyler	...	Spiggoty
Harry Hayden	...	Horace Hotchkiss
Chief Yowlachie	...	Running Wolf
Sarah Padden	...	Mrs. Hallahan
Catherine Doucet	...	Grandma Crockett
Edward Gargan	...	Train Conductor
Olin Howland	...	Finnegan (as Olin Howlin)
Francis Pierlot	...	Mr. Brittle

Also Known As:

The Tenderfoot (USA) (original script title)

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Approved | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-12

Filming Locations:

Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Allied Artists Pictures

Soundtrack:

Old Dan Tucker

Aw, shucks, ma'am; it's a charming little Western comedy

The year is 1880-something, and gunsmith Daniel Bone (just one "o") decides to abandon tame New York for a part of the country where a person in his line of work can expect to be kept a little busier. The thoroughly decent Daniel might be a tenderfoot, but between his professional skill with firearms and his great reader's head full of knowledge, he turns out to be more than a match for the desperados he meets en route to-- and in-- lawless Arsenic City, Nevada. Our boy doesn't do badly with the local Native tribe, either. Now if he could just get past the defenses of Miss Liza, an over-cautious innocent who's come West to find her late father's lost gold mine...

Eddie Albert is quite charming as the titular dude in this slight but enjoyable, gently comic Western. In fact, there's charm to spare here: James Gleason endears as the grizzled prospector-sidekick, Barton McLean (later Gereral Peterson in "I Dream of Jeannie") wins one over as the most sympathetic of a host of black-hatted bandits, and Gale Storm is refreshingly non-cloying as your standard-issue spunky, naive heroine. Things never descend to the cartoonish, allowing Albert to get through a couple of on-the-trail ballads (which he croons in a pleasant tenor while strumming a guitar), a dramatic display of "Indian sign language," and even an idealistic law-and-order speech to an angry mob with his dignity fully intact. Indeed, one's inspired to wonder why the future small-screen star never quite scored as a cinematic leading man-- he certainly seems to have had the potential.

Available on DVD-- think I'll watch it again.