The Surest Thing For Warner Profits

Randolph Scott Brings Home Bacon with Fort Worth (1951)

A Randolph Scott done for comparative Warners' change ($698K), and like all of his for them, filled profit's pot, as in one million of black ink. WB should have carried Randy about the lot on a litter, as who else was as dependable pulling a money train? And yet, Jack L., like front office others, did not respect westerns except in terms of quick cash, which should have been cause for all to revere cowboys and make greater effort on their behalves. Fox had expended for Tom Mix by means of record pay back in a (silent)day, but what westerner since had reached such heights? Scott and Joel McCrea were good as guarantors of profit in postwar. Trouble was studio conviction that rubes for cowpoking would watch and enjoy anything, which wasn't far from right. This rube sat for Fort Worth and had plenty a good time, never mind its being cynically built around stock footage from 1939's Dodge City, plus bits from San Antonio of six years later. You can depend on any Warner western after the war to begin with Dodge City's time-honored shot of wagons reflected off water as they pass by a Technicolored river. In a fair world, Michael Curtiz would have got co-director credit on Fort Worth. The story lumbers, but there are spasms of action. Baddies include Ray Teal, Bob Steele, Paul Picerni, others --- mere props to fall down at point of Randy's gun. David Brian is a conflicted villain with Phyllis Thaxter the wan heroine. Seems every woman that worked at Warners would do so eventually with R. Scott, not a disagreeable thing in itself (he was well-liked), but where was career advance in it?