Goin’ to Town **** (1935, Mae West, Paul Cavanagh, Gilbert Emery, Marjorie Gateson, Ivan Lebedeff) – Classic Movie Review 7450

Director Alexander Hall’s 1935 comedy Western Goin’ to Town stars Mae West in a typical role as Cleo Borden, a former saloon dance hall gal who is left a ranch when her fiancé Buck Gonzales (Fred Kohler) is killed, hits oil on the land, and enters high society to find a respectable man, soon falling for a posh British engineer, Edward Carrington (Paul Cavanagh).

When she meets Carrington again, he has becomes Lord Stratton. Unfortunately, Mae has now clawed her way up the social ladder by entering into a loveless marriage with old, boring, bankrupt Fletcher Colton (Monroe Owsley).

Thanks to American film censorship, Mae is forced to tone down the sexual innuendos in her screenplay, but fortunately not too much, so the gags are still funny.

And she goes for a big aria in ‘MON COEUR S’OEUVRE A TA VOIX’ from Camille Saint-Saëns’s SAMSON ET DALILA [Sampson and Delilah] when she sings at the opera (with Vladimar Bykoff), though Sammy Fain (music) and Irving Kahal (lyrics)’s ‘He’s a Bad Bad Man (But He’s Good Enough for Me)’ seems much more her cup of tea, and so are ‘NOW I’M A LADY’ and ‘LOVE IS LOVE’ from the same team.

That year – 1935 – Mae West was America’s highest paid woman.

Goin’ to Town is written by Mae West from a story by Marion Morgan and George B Dowell.

Also in the cast are Tito Coral, Marjorie Gateson, Fred Kohler Sr, Gilbert Emery, Monroe Owsley, Grant Withers, Luis Alberni, Lucio Villegas, Mona Rico, Wade Botelier, Paul Harvey, Joe Frye, Vladimar Bykoff, Stanley Andrews, Irving Bacon, Gino Corrado, Nell Craig, Cyril Ring, Syd Saylor, Rafael Storm, Laura Treadwell, Morgan Wallace, Robert Dudley, Francis Ford, Virginia Hammond, Leonid Kinskey, Tom London, Frank Mayo, Frank McGlynn Sr, Frank Mundin, Jack Pennick, Stanley Price and Julian Rivero.

There are only 12 Mae West movies: Night After Night, She Done Him Wrong, I’m No Angel, Belle of the Nineties, Goin’ to Town, Klondike Annie, Go West Young Man, Every Day’s a Holiday, My Little Chickadee, The Heat’s On, Myra Breckinridge and Sextette.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7450

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