MARRIED BACHELOR (1941)

Silly romantic comedy made bearable mostly by its amiable cast. Robert Young is a charming young man who has gotten by for years on small-potatoes schemes and scams; his wife Ruth Hussey is ready for some stability. Young promises Hussey he'll go respectable, but he winds up in a partnership with a small-time bookie (Sam Levene). When Young takes a long-shot bet on a horse race from thuggish Sheldon Leonard, the horse wins and they owe Leonard $17,000, which is about $16,000 more than they have. In an attempt to get some money owed to them, Young and Levene go to penniless professor Felix Bressart, who gives them a manuscript on modern marriage; if they get it published, they might be able to pay Leonard. Young finagles his way into the office of publisher Lee Bowman, presenting the book as a bachelor's jaded view of married life; Bowman takes the book and when it's promoted into a bestseller, Young has to appear in public as a bachelor, which understandably irritates his wife, who gets back at him by posing as an unmarried woman and flirting with Bowman. Of course, a happy ending is never in doubt. The screenplay, by future MGM studio head Dore Schary, has a screwballish feel and some good ideas, but the movie is never able to transcend its B-movie feel. The actors are all fine, with Leonard especially funny (though not at all threatening) as a slang-talking hoodlum who has to have all his conversations translated for Bressart by Young. Connie Gilchrist has an amusing moment at the very end. [TCM]


THE KID FROM TEXAS (1939)

Dennis O'Keefe plays a Texas cowboy who has somehow developed a taste for polo out on the range. Members of a rich Eastern family come out to O'Keefe's ranch to buy polo horses; when they decide to take Lone Star, O'Keefe's favorite horse, he heads back with them to help train the horse. Of course, he's also fallen in love with the daughter (Florence Rice) and we know it's just a matter of time before she figures out that she's in love with him, despite his crude galumphing ways. Rice's brother (Anthony Allan) and fiance (Robert Wilcox) allow O'Keefe to join them on their ritzy polo field, but his hot-dogging ways cause him to be thrown off the team, so he joins up with a Wild West show and develops a hit novelty act with a "cowboys vs. Indians" polo team. O'Keefe and Rice try to forget each other, but things are righted by the end. This lightweight second feature has some bright moments and a decent supporting cast including Buddy Ebsen as O'Keefe's sidekick, Jessie Ralph as Rice's wise old Aunt Minnie, and Jack Carson as a reporter who becomes O'Keefe's PR man. O'Keefe makes a handsome and charming lead, though Rice is a bit colorless. As comedies about cowboys and polo go, this is near the top of the heap. [TCM]