Goin' to Town (1935)
7/10
Miss West gives her Best
24 November 2003
I must confess to a little bias here, I just love Mae West so you won't get an objective assessment of Goin' to Town from me.

Mae is pleasingly plump in this one, an unlikely sex goddess though it must be remembered that she was about forty before she made a movie. Still, the suitors crowd around her, especially in the Race Track sequence.

Goin' to Town seems to be a sort of modern-day Western with Mae getting around in a car as well as on a horse but she wears the same elaborate Victorian gowns as she did in Belle of the Nineties.

The plot is well summed up elsewhere; Mae is engaged to Buck Gonzales who is shot while rustling cattle. A lawyer advises her that she is entitled to his estate since she agreed to marry him. `You did consent, didn't you?' Mae: `Certainly did - twice!' Another line capable of a risqué interpretation is when Buck says `I've been thinking about you a lot lately' Mae replies `You must be tired'

Wonderful entertainment, she even warbles agreeably in the Samson and Delilah scenes and how about that walk? The word sashay was invented for her. No wonder there were strong rumours that Mae was a female impersonator. She describes her self as `a good woman for a bad man' and later `I'm a woman of very few words but lots of action' (she learnt Spanish while working in Tijuana!)

Goin' to Town is not her best film (for me - She Done Him Wrong) but I thoroughly enjoy it just the same.
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