Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950)

Director: Charles Lamont
Writer: Howard Dimsdale, based on a story by Stanley Roberts and Howard Dimsdale
Stars: Donald O’Connor, Gale Storm, Walter Brennan, Vincent Price and Eve Arden

Index: The First Thirty.

Vincent Price is the best thing about most of the films in this book, whether they’re bad or good or great, because he began fully formed as an actor and demonstrated his versatility quickly. However, I’d suggest that he isn’t the best thing about this one, even with most of the best dialogue thrown his way.

That’s because, while his character, a hack of a travelling showman called Tracy Holland, is crucial to the plot’s existence, he isn’t that important to where it goes. This is obviously intended to be a showcase for its star, Donald O’Connor, and the scene stealer this time out is Walter Brennan, in one of the largest roles I’ve ever seen him take. He’s no sidekick here!

Cactus Creek is apparently right here in my home state of Arizona and it turns out to be the immediate destination for all the core cast.

For a start, there’s Rimrock Thomas, who’s a bandit planning to rob the bank, even though there’s a poster on its wall that promises five different rewards for him, dead or alive. That’s Brennan and he arrives just before O’Connor, as Eddie Timmons, who’s putting up posters to promote Lily Martin, star of the Tracy Holland Repertory Company, soon to appear in Cactus Creek, which is starved for entertainment.

Crucially, Thomas knows of Martin, who he saw on a magazine cover a decade earlier and describes as the “prettiest thing you ever laid eyes on”. He was smitten back then and he’s as smitten now, even without a fresh glimpse.

Meanwhile, putting up flyers is merely the first job for Eddie, who only wants to perform on stage but does pretty much everything else instead, as Holland doesn’t believe he’s ready. We’ll soon be able to judge that for ourselves, but for now it falls to his boss to make that decision and he’s too busy caressing his own ego. Oh, and Price gives him an ego!

He arrives in a stagecoach with his star, who has no illusions about his narcissism. While he miscounts his curtain calls and misremembers his triumphs, all while quoting Shakespeare at every opportunity, Lily, played by Gale Storm, tells him that, “You’re conducting one of the great love affairs of all time—with yourself!”

Price is a joy in his over the top ham mode. This isn’t the first time he quoted Shakespeare in his films, as he did lots of that in The Eve of St. Mark, but it’s Tracy Holland who points the way to Edward Lionheart, his vengeful actor in Theatre of Blood, not Moolah.

His biggest critics here work for him rather than write reviews, only starting with Lily but extending to her niece Julie, who completes a rather skimpy Tracy Holland cast, and Eddie, who comprises an even skimpier crew, given that he’s effectively all of it.

Never mind the tap dance number he shows off to Holland, who shaves and mostly ignores him, muttering only, “Your performance was adequate. It would serve.” And never mind the cast during the first Tracy Holland show. Even if the audience don’t notice him, everyone at home watching will be rivetted at what Eddie’s doing to make it all work.

Before anybody does anything on stage, he’s the pianist playing in the show, while winding up the curtain with his other hand. He’s the lighting tech, aiming a spotlight at Lily Martin, and all the stage hands, leaping back and forth from one job to another as needed, chasing up ladders then sliding back down them. As one scene unfolds, he resets the stage for the next. And he provides live foley, all while handling props, like making it snow on stage. I’ve seen one man bands do less in a performance.

By comparison, the show itself can’t match it for entertainment, especially when it comes time for a melodrama, No Place Like Home, with all the moralising and convenience we might expect. Price overacts horribly as the drunken father but not as the soliloquising villain who wants Miss Ida, though he bows at every boo and hiss from the audience.

Quite frankly, it’s improved by its disastrous ending, as Eddie finally and hilariously fails to do every job at once, because he’s distracted by Rimrock, who’s climbed into the rafters to peek at Miss Lily. I told you he was smitten!

And that disaster is promptly compounded by the discovery that Rimrock’s crew have just robbed the Cactus Creek bank, as the troupe, apparently used to being run out of town, sees the response to that as a response to them and so heads for the hills. It’s here, with this setup in play, that things really begin.

This is a surprisingly fun picture, fluff to be sure but enjoyable fluff. O’Connor continues to shine as Eddie, especially physically but also in the romance and comedy. Both ladies do their job, as does Price, though all three of them are firmly in supporting roles, only there for what they can do (or not do) for Eddie.

Only Walter Brennan gets to really steal any of the spotlight from O’Connor, and he does so by being stubbornly focused throughout. He’s playing an outlaw, so he can do whatever he wants, even if what he wants changes with the story. Eddie can’t, as a lowly gofer, and maybe Rimrock gravitates to that.

Initially, he just wants to rob a bank, as he’s always done. Circumstances highlight to him that a theatre troupe could be great cover for a bank robber, so he joins it at gunpoint. And then, as he gets to know everyone, he starts to grow from a one note villain to a surprisingly nuanced guardian angel. Given that Brennan usually played one note sidekicks, this actually turns out to be quite the gift of a part for him.

So far, so good. There’s bad to come and it’s really bad. In fact, it’s a stage performance so bad that I now understand why this picture is so underseen and so hard to find, which is why I’m stuck watching a VHS rip of awful quality.

Fortunately, it isn’t the opportunity Eddie’s inevitably given to shine on stage, taking his boss’s place as the romantic foil for Catherine the Great in a scene that hearkens right back to an earlier Price film, A Royal Scandal. That’s actually rather fun.

What isn’t is the musical number that serves as the finalé to the movie and to all the story arcs within it. It’s a blackface number, which is bad enough to begin with but its even worse in this particular context. It’s almost trying to be as offensive to posterity as humanly possible.

It’s called Are You from Dixie? and somehow Rimrock playing the Mammy role, in spurs no less, isn’t its most offensive aspect. Ironically, it was written by Jack Yellen and George Cobb, the former of whom also wrote Happy Days are Here Again. Not during this one, they aren’t.