Cinema Sunday: Go West

 

Oh a look! It's a Cinema Sunday! And this a week, we're a gonna look at a western a picture a featuring the Marx a Brothers, Go West, a 1940 film from MGM.  

OK, that may sound like a weird mash up with Groucho, Harpo, and Chico in the Old West. And it is. 

Before anyone can have any adventures in the west, they have to get there. 

The movie begins at a rail station with men ready to head west to find their fortune. 

S. Quentin Quale (Groucho) is heading west to find his fortune, by hook and/or crook, Quale is flexible. 

The Panello brothers, Joseph (Chico) and Rusty (Harpo) are also heading west to find their fortune.  They too are rather flexible on how such fortune may be obtained. 

They are all short the money needed for a train ticket and spend the first act conning each other out of the same money.

The Panellos come out on top and head out west. They have dreams of finding gold but they ain't gonna find it on Dead Man's Gulch. The Panellos give their last $10 to old miner Dan Wilson to get the deed to this worthless patch of ground. 

Meanwhile, Dan Wilson's granddaughter Eve is in love with Terry Turner who is from the wrong side of tracks which is a neat trick since there's no track yet. Terry has plans to convince the railroad to direct their track through Dead Man's Gulch which will make the land worth something. 

Meanwhile, S. Quentin Quale (who you may recall is played b y Groucho Marx) has made it out west and somehow insinuated himself into this railroad transaction and is working with the Panellos. 

Meanwhile, crooked railroad executive John Beecher and shady saloon owner "Red" Baxter have gotten their grubby hands on the deed to Dead Man's Gulch for the low, low price of absolutely zilch. 

Meanwhile.... OK, I gotta admit. I was watching this movie on a Sunday afternoon. My daughter Randie was out of the house, my wife Andrea was in the back of the house and I think I may have dozed off. 

Somehow a chase ensues. Beecher and Baxter are racing to get out of the town to do something or another to finalize their theft of Dead Man's Gulch. Quale, the Panellas, Eve and Terry are are in hot pursuit to keep that from happening. There's a train involved that at some point starts skittering around in places without a track. Then when its back on track, the engine starts losing steam. So Joseph and Rusty break off pieces of the train cars for wood to feed to the engine's furnace.  

When the train gets where it's going, the engine is towing a bunch of stripped down frames where cars used to be. The whole sequence with the train is a remarkable stunt for a 1940 movie.  

By the way, the act of stripping the train in order to provide more fuel for the locomotive was based on a similar scene from the 1927 silent comedy film, The General starring Buster Keaton. Keaton actually served as an advisor on Go West.  

Yes, there are extended sequences where Chico regales us with a piano solo. And in the middle of a Native American village, Harpo still delivers his customary harp solo. 

The chief likes Harpo because he's the Marx Brother who doesn't talk.  

A publicity still for Go West with the Marx Brothers.
But that ain't Groucho. 

 

Go West screenwriter Irving Brecher stood in for an ailing Groucho when publicity stills for the film were madr. Brecher bore a remarkable resemblance to Groucho, sporting Groucho's glasses, greasepaint mustache and eyebrows.

Go West paves the way a bit for the Mel Brooks classic western send up Blazing Saddles which would be released about 30 years later. There are lots of jokes at the expense of the tropes of western movies as well as some anachronistic fun. At one point, Chico mentions making a phone call to someone and Groucho has to remind him the telephone hasn't been invented yet. 

The plot (such as it is) is gossamer thin but the point of Go West seems to be to let the Marx Brothers on a western movie set and create as much havoc as possible.

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Next week's Cinema Sunday will be the first one for the new year. With a shiny new tomorrow laid out in front of us, I will be posting about a retro sci fi film from the early 2000's, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.