Junk history/first-rate DeMille. In their second pairing of the year (after MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN), Gary Cooper & Jean Arthur are in peak form as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, jabbing away at each other to hide their true feelings. But unspoken love keeps drawing them together, tested to the limit by Indians on the warpath getting ready to attack Gen. George Custer with surplus Civil War repeating rifles illegally sold to them by Charles Bickford. James Ellison is pleasant, if out of his league as Buffalo Bill Cody, a pal charged with taking Wild Bill in as prisoner, but the rest of the cast is plenty tasty, especially two-faced Porter Hall and a very young Anthony Quinn, making a splashy (near) debut as an excitable Indian brave. (DeMille tosses in a line about unfair treatment on the reservation, but this 1936 film hasn’t a Native American clue in its headdress, from Paul Harvey’s Yellow Hand on down.) Fresh off an unexpected flop (THE CRUSADES/’35), Cecil B. seems reinvigorated, less studio-bound then usual, happily tweaking history into six-barrel action*, staging city life with multi-plane visual design, even finding dramatic heft in the Western landscape, all neatly caught by lenser Victor Milner.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Qualities he’d carry over to his next production, THE BUCCANEER/’37.
ATTENTION MUST PAID: Note our Euro-Poster uses the better known Buffalo Bill, not Wild Bill, for its title.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In 1950, Jean Arthur played PETER PAN on B’way; incidental songs by Leonard Bernstein. A hit (321 perfs) unrelated to the later Mary Martin musical. But if you’d like to know what the hell Jean Arthur’s Peter Pan was like, this film’s hoydenesque Calamity Jane is probably our only clue.
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