robert-temple-1 Review of The Cowboy and the Lady

The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)

Delightful romantic comedy with witty script and excellent performances

[7/10 · 12 January 2016]

This is a superb example of a thirties romantic comedy. Merle Oberon, who the following year would dazzle the world in WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939), here pre-dazzles the world with her witty charm, big eyes, and mischievous smiles. Gary Cooper is the tall (very tall, compared to Oberon, whom he cannot kiss without practically bending double) innocent cowboy whose favourite gal is his mare Bess. Oberon is the rich and cocooned daughter of a politician who wants to become President of the USA, and uses her to host his dinners just as the bachelor President James Buchanan used to do, when his daughter became 'the First Lady'. Early in this film Oberon is even toasted at one of the dinners as 'America's future First Lady'. (Her father is clearly a widower, though this is never stated.) This film had more writers than any film I have ever encountered. There were seventeen of them! The main screenplay appears to have been written by the well-known playwright and screenwriter S. N. Behrman. But he must not have done a good enough job, because 16 other people had to be brought in to pep up the script. They included such famous figures as Anita Loos and her husband John Emerson, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, and Robert Ardrey. With all that talent thrown into the soup, it is no wonder that many witty lines appear throughout the film, many of them doubtless having come from the acerbically mirthful Anita Loos. The film also had three directors, H. C. Potter being credited but the other two, including the famous William Wyler, not being credited. The reason for this deluge of talent was due to confusion on the part of Samuel Goldwyn. As several reviewers have pointed out, Goldwyn started with a title he liked and then tried to find someone to write a story for that title. Talk about top-down instead of bottom-up! There had already been three films made with the title THE COWBOY AND THE LADY. The first was a 1903 short, apparently lost. Then there were two silent films of the same title, made in 1915 and 1922, both based upon a play by Clyde Fitch. Both these films are also apparently lost, and neither had any relation with this 1938 film except for the title. Probably Goldwyn knew the title, whether consciously or subconsciously, from the 1922 film, it stuck in his mind and he got fixated upon the possibilities which it gave for an entertaining story. The juxtaposition of a cowboy and a lady was ready-made for comic possibilities, especially in America, where cowboys resonated with the public in contrast with the stuffy New England Establishment. The film succeeds in being very amusing and entertaining, and in this case too many cooks did not spoil the broth.