THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 24

THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND

(20th Century-Fox) HY it should be funnier for a stage or screen comedian to sit on his hat than to stand on it is a problem which I have never seen explained to my entire satisfaction, though I have heard it discussed with appropriate solemnity by several near-psychologists ‘of my acquaintance. Why it should be even funnier to see someone shot in the stern is perhaps capable of explanation in simpler terms, but most of us would prefer, I imagine, ‘to forgo explanations which might only interfere with our enjoyment of these primitive. emotions, I say so much by way of introduction to The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend, because I feel it is a circumstance not unworthy of record that in this production, for once the emphasis is less on Miss Betty Grable and her legs than on another member of the cast, and a different (if more or less contiguous) portion of the human anatomy. For this unorthodox manipulation of raw material, we are indebted to Preston Sturges who not only wrote the screenstory, but also produced and directed the picture. Sturges, who generally combines these three functions, has other characteristics which further set him apart from the general run of Hollywood producers, and which rather predispose one in his favour. He refuses to toe what might be called the Hollywood partyline (generally the line of least resist--ance), he monkeys about with The Formula, fits stars to his stories instead of vice versa, and in general’is about as non-conformist as it is possible to be in Hollywood, and still survive. Against him it may be said, in the present instance at least, that once he has turned everyone and everything up-side-down he is occasionally uncertain what to do next. Miss Grable inadvertently shoots the Hon. Alfalfa J. O’Toole (a puisne judge on a Wild West circuit) in the crupper and all that one can be reasonably sure about is that the same thing is going to happen again before the final fadeout. And just to be different, Sturges makes it happen twicewhich is rather rough on the judge. The film is, in fact, a wild farrago of nonsense and seems (like one of Thurber’s drawings) to have reached completion by some other process than the common ,one of intent. As you might expect, it is uneven. More than once Sturges tries too hard or stands on*his head too long, but the film contains one or two scenes as funny as anything in, say, Walter | Mitty. Hugh Herbert, as a myopic bushsurgeon attempting to extract the first bullet, figures in one of these, and in another Betty Grable and Rudy Vallee, soulfully harmonising In the Gloaming, really bring the house down. | or the Gable fan pur sang, I should add that the star’s manifold attractions are not left unexploited. There is, of course, not a bashful bend in her entire collection and Sturges (who has apparently an artist’s eye for balance and symmetry in its proper place) has even added a bustle, : :