Arizona *** (1940, Jean Arthur, William Holden, Warren William) – Classic Movie Review 9891

Adventurer Peter Muncie (William Holden) collides with tough Tucson tomboy pioneer woman Phoebe Titus (Jean Arthur) and the sparks fly in director Wesley Ruggles’s entertaining 1940 vintage action Western film Arizona. It is long (as 125 minutes) and slackly handled, but impressively large scale and always trying hard to please.

Columbia Pictures’s extremely costly ($2 million) production certainly looks good, with eye-catching designs by Lionel Banks and superb black and white cinematography by Joseph Walker, and it has the authentic period touch.

But Claude Binyon’s screenplay (based on the story by Clarence Budington Kelland) is mostly ordinary and familiar, though the movie sparks up in the fine action sequences, and, while there is no magic in the Arthur-Holden pairing, Arthur is very spirited and convincingly tough.

The Holden part was intended for Gary Cooper.

Also in the cast are Warren William, Porter Hall, Paul Harvey, George Chandler, Regis Toomey, Edgar Buchanan, Paul Lopez, Byron Foulger, Colin Tapley, Uvaldo Verela, Earl Crawford, Ludwig Hardt, Patrick Moriarty and Syd Saylor.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9891

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