I'm from Missouri (1939) User Reviews

Bland film with a few okay moments

[reginadanooyawkdiva · 5/10 · 29 November 2008]

I saw this film when I was a kid when television stations would use these type of films as fillers rather than the horrible infomercials they have today.

I thought I'd never see this film again until I was lucky (?) enough to purchase a DVD copy of it. The copy I got was in very poor shape, but since the film was so plodding it didn't really matter. I only wanted to see it for Gene Lockhart's role.

Bob Burns (known to radio as "The Arkansas Traveler"-sort of a Will Rogers type) is a mule owner named Sweeney Bliss (the name "Sweeney Todd" kept floating through my head every time someone said his name.) who somehow goes over to England to sell mules. Gene Lockhart plays a tractor company owner named Porgie Rowe who is trying to get the British to buy his tractors instead. Anyway, Sweeny goes over to England to convince them that mules have more power than tractors. With him he brings his annoying, social climbing wife Julie (Gladys George) and Julie's sister who has her hometown boyfriend and an Englishman fighting for her affections.

Based on Sweeney's claim that Great Britain would buy the mules, Sweeney's hometown sends every mule in town to England and it's up to Sweeney to convince them to buy them. After about 40 minutes into the film, I stopped caring why or how. Anyway, in the end, a British Marquis saves the day and the mules are sold and everyone lives happily ever after.

Bob Burns tries his best Will Rogers impersonation but is way too bland in comparison. Not enough Gene Lockhart and too much of Gladys George's annoying character. It's a shame they made a good character actress as Ms. George so unsympathetic. You spend the whole film wishing that Sweeney Bliss was REALLY Sweeney Todd.

Bob Burns is the prototype for the man who asked them to please pass the jelly.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 22 August 2020]

It's obvious that Bob Burns loves mules more than people, and can't force himself under any circumstance to stay away from an auction that involves mules. Unfortunately, his social climbing wife, played by the talented but misused Gladys George is embarrassed by him, and keeps making a fool of herself. Every time she has a social event and Burns shows up, he causes chaos with his homespun humor or the presence of a donkey. She continues to make a jackass out of herself when he goes to England on a business trip and ends up involved in the government's decision to buy mules to replace tractors.

Tractors, it appears, break down, and mules, in spite of being sometimes stubborn, are great work animals. Somehow, they join the upper-crust of British society without a title, and her attempts to throw a social bash results her in further assumptions when a group of burns friends show up and George mistakes them for actors when indeed they are members of the titled elite.

This is an enjoyable but corny mixture of different classes of society, and it shows that the nouveau-riche represented by George, are the genuine snobs and the elite titled are down-to-earth and curious about things that haven't been a part of their social existence.

This features a great cast of veteran character actors, led by Gene Lockhart as Burns' business rival. Patricia Morrison as his uppity sister, E.E. Clive as a fun loving Duke, Doris Lloyd as his classy, life loving wife and Melville Cooper as a stuffy English butler whom George hires. Dennie Moore, the manicurist from the women, is very funny as a social climber who keeps changing accents. Burns is an acquired taste, and George, best known for her long-suffering mothers and the Texas Guinan like hostess in "The Roaring Twenties", play a character difficult to sympathize with. The story is amusing but completely unbelievable, and its that absurdity that makes me rank this as a near misfire.