Metro Men In Period Dress

R. Taylor v. W. Beery In Stand Up and Fight (1939)

Fallen aristocrat Robert Taylor heads west, falls prey to Wallace Beery's slave-running cabal. W.S Van Dyke directs for his usual speed; also there's snowy location and lively fisticuffs staged thereon. Whatever doubt lingered over Taylor's he-man-ness is put to rest when he whips burly Beery. Not quite a western; it starts with a foxhunt and Taylor is equal part genteel and rugged. A slave angle isn't on margins, the narrative being all about how freed ones were often recaptured/resold by outlaws. Beery is uncouth per formula and an essential "good" badman in accord with MGM wont and censor-mandate. It was S.O.P. to team him with a lead man who could carry romance bags, in this case Taylor vis a vis Florence Rice. Flavor of the period is conveyed by steam trains going over wooden track we'd last seen in Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality. Some of the gags are so close that I wonder if comedy consultant Keaton, by then on Metro payroll, wasn't brought in to sweeten them.