RAMROD (1947)

Made at pretty much the height of Hollywood's classic film noir period, RAMROD shares a lot of similarities with film noir: stark B&W photography filled with deep shadows, a sexy femme fatale, brutal violence and a grim story.

Veronica Lake is the daughter of a rancher (Charles Ruggles) who himself is under the thumb of an even more powerful cattleman, Preston Foster.  Her father wants her to marry Foster but she wants nothing of it.  When the film opens yet another rancher (and the man Veronica loves) is being ran out of town with his tail between his legs.  Before he leaves he signs his ranch over to Lake since he believes that she has a better chance of making it work than she does.  The first thing she does is hire local ranch hand Joel McCrea to be ranch foreman.  He knows this is the beginning of a violent range war so he only agrees if Veronica swears to play on the side of the law and make the other sides out to be the bad guys.  She agrees, but soon tires at McCreas slow pace. She starts using her feminine ways ("From now on I'm gonna make a life of my own.  And being a woman I won't have to use guns.") to speed up the process, but it only ends up creating more bloodshed.

RAMROD is a interesting western.  The story is complex.  In fact, when the film starts there's so much stuff going on it almost feels like you just walked in on the middle of the picture.  The casting is brilliant.  I especially liked the casting of the normally comedic Charles Ruggles as Lake's serious father.  The direction by Andre De Toth (who was Lake's real life husband at the time) is confident and the camerawork by Russell Harlen is very impressive and a joy to watch.  Recommended for western fans. 

My only reservation is Veronica Lake herself.  She does a fine job, but I think somebody like Barbara Stanwyck would have brought much more depth to the character.

Boom mic shadow.

Blink and you'll miss Jeff Corey as a hotel employee.

NO TIME FOR COMEDY (1940)

Well, nobody can accuse Warner Brothers of false advertising.  There isn't a single funny thing in NO TIME FOR COMEDY.

When small town playwright Jimmy Stewart scores his first Broadway play, he heads to NYC to help with the production.  He ends up falling in love with the lead actress, Rosalind Russell.  The honeymoon doesn't last too long though when he starts powerdrinking and spending too much time with a rich socialite.

Right from the very beginning NTFC is a bust.  After Stewart shows up in the Big Apple there's the standard country boy in the big city humor that's not even remotely funny.  At the same time there's some, I guess, romantic sparks between Steward and Russell, but it's so badly written and the characters so poorly constructed that I was taken back when they started talking about getting married.  I didn't even know they liked each other!  The marriage happens and through a quick montage we see that Stewart has become a successful playwright.  The action then settles in on the home life of Stewart and Russell...oh wait never mind, I guess now suddenly Stewart is an alcoholic who's never home.  When he finally manages to stumble home he's in love(?) with a rich patron of the arts who's taken Stewart under her wealthy wing.  Rosalind does the only sensible thing and gets engaged to the socialite's husband!  What the hell?  Then after Stewart's next play is a bust he learns humility and returns to Rosalind.  Yeah, I'm sure that'll last.

Unfortunately, as with the majority of these older studio system production line movies, we'll never know the true story of what was going on behind the camera, but I can only imagine the writing portion of this production was a disaster.  The story was adapted from a play so I don't know if there was something lost between the stage and the screen, but even with two of the finest comedic actors of the time NTFC is a laughless bore.  Honestly I don't even know how this clunker got the greenlight.  Skip it with a vengeance.