Texas Lady

Plot synopsis:
On a riverboat, gambler Chris Mooney loses heavily to Prudence Webb, borrows another $30,000 and loses that to her, too.
He offers her a partnership. Prudence declines, informing him that her father embezzled funds to gamble with Chris, then committed suicide after he lost. Prudence has her revenge and the money to pay back her late father's employer.
She rides to Fort Ralston, Texas to claim her inheritance, the Clarion newspaper, which her dad won in a card game. Stringer Winfield, the postal carrier, warns her that town founder Micah Ralston and ranch partner Sturdy own practically everything and everybody.
Clarion editor Clay Ballard tries to get Prudence's ownership overturned, but drunken lawyer Cass Gower sobers up and wins her case, even though Judge Herzog is in Ralston's pocket. A hired gun, Jess Foley, acting as a "deputy," kills Gantz, a rival rancher. Foley then makes a play for Prudence, asking her to dance and to teach him to read.
Chris shows up. Foley objects to his romantic interest in Prudence, who warns Chris to beware of Foley's jealousy and gun. Chris manages to hold off Foley, who also has Gantz's widow after him.
The crooked sheriff, Herndon, on orders from Ralston, gives 24-hour notice to Prudence to repay $6,000 in back taxes or forfeit her property. Prudence concedes defeat and intends to ride out of town with Chris, who gambled and failed to raise the money.
Her new neighbors collect the $6,000 on her behalf, also naming Chris as the new mayor, Cass as the new judge and saloon owner Moore as the new sheriff. Stringer rides for the Texas Rangers as soon as Ralston's men come with guns blazing, Cass getting killed. Law and order arrive in town, with Ralston & Sturdy finally relenting.

Tags: murder

Review:
Not bad for a Western.
Claudette Colbert is wonderful as Prudence, a woman who has to go to a little country town that's seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where she has inherited the local paper.
The men about town are naturally surprised to find that she's a woman, and don't exactly welcome her spritely ways and 'interference' with 'their' paper.
Luckily for Prudence, the card shark that she slayed in New Orleans comes to her rescue, which is nice of him after the beating she gave him in their game of poker - one of the film's most enjoyable scenes.
Not a wonderful movie, but not bad, and pretty good for a Western..
Go west Claudette, go west.
This was Claudette Colbert's second to last theatrical feature and if this was the quality of scripts she was being offered at that time it's no wonder she stayed away six years between this and Parrish.
First of all she belongs in some urbane urban setting not the Old West and try though she might she is out of place there.
Additionally she and Barry Sullivan, always a dull leading man no matter his costar, go together like oil and water sharing zero romantic chemistry.
The script is ordinary and the direction not terribly exciting plus the film is soft and fuzzy with over-bright color.
If you like Claudette or westerns it's okay but don't expect anything above the routine..
Get a grip.
>>Claudette Colbert looking far too old and matronly for the part of an ambitious small-town journalist and card sharp Colbert certainly doesn't look matronly in this film - she's just as slender and attractive as ever.I've just attended the WIllimasburg Film Festival, which showed this film.
It has great meaning for Gregory Walcott- it was his "breakthrough" role, and his wife was pregnant with his first child, which she gave birth to a week after the movie finished filming.In Walcott's biography, Hollywood Adventures, he tells the story of how he first met Colbert, who was concerned that he was so much younger than she was.
But if older leading men can be put in with actresses 20 years younger than them, than women should be able to get the same treatment.It is a bit episodic, but fun nevertheless..
Claudette Goes West.
Texas Lady marked Claudette Colbert's one and only western and I think this RKO film was probably something that they might have had Barbara Stanwyck in mind for.
Colbert though she gave a decent performer really is not a western type.
I suspect she wanted at least one on her film resume and took Texas Lady which was an inflated B film.After learning the game of poker for years, Colbert takes Barry Sullivan on and beats him handily.
Sullivan, a gentleman riverboat gambler had cleaned out her father who had embezzled money and then lost his ill gotten gains at the poker table and promptly killed himself.
After restoring the family honor, Claudette goes to Texas where she's inherited a newspaper.The paper is the paid for rag of the owners of the local Ponderosa, Ray Collins and Walter Sande.
Claudette starts agitating for a railroad spur to come to town.
But that will mean less dependency on the cattle barons and new people settling.
The plot here has certain similarities to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Claudette also gets some attention from fast draw deputy Gregory Walcott who kills a couple of small ranchers in the service Collins and Sande.In the meantime Sullivan comes to town as his reputation is shot to all heck on the riverboat scene.
Being both southerners to the manor born they find a lot in common.Texas Lady was a decent enough western, but it looks like it was edited considerably down and a lot of the story doesn't really make sense.
And Colbert is just not well cast in westerns.
But her fans might like it.
It sure is a far cry from the comedies she did in the Thirties and Forties..
Fairly uninteresting b-movie but distracting enough if you're in an undemanding mood.
On the way to a small Texas town to claim the local newspaper as her inheritance, Prudence Webb stops off to fleece a infamous gambler (Chris Mooney) in revenge for him winning a lot of money off her father  a debt that eventually led to his suicide.
On arriving in the town, Prudence finds that the paper is run by Clay Ballard who denies that the paper was ever signed over to Webb's father and refuses to give up ownership.
Prudence turns to the law and quickly makes enemies in the town by using the court system to claim her inheritance and wins her case.
With the town's powerbase against her, who'd have expected that it would be Chris Mooney who would come to her aid?!
And so goes the story with this fairly run-of-the-mill western that is strangely coloured and lacking anything special to really justify watching.
The basic plot sees a bit of romance set against a back drop of a stranger in town causing a conflict with the bad element and, yes, it is delivered as flatly and unimaginatively as that summary suggests.
The basic characters don't really add anything of interest and I did struggle to really care about any of them mainly because they were fairly cardboard and uninteresting.
Of course, this being a b-movie sort of affair then it is maybe a bit unfair to be harsh on it because all it is aiming to do is fill time and provide a bit of entertainment and not much else.
In that regard the film does alright  with poker games, fights, shoot outs, horse riding and action; none of it is anything special of course but it just about does enough to be distracting.The cast pretty much match this with average performances all round.
Colbert is OK but never made a lasting impression on me; she seems to enjoy the lead role and she matches the material.
Sullivan should have been the slick man of the film and brought a spark to all his scenes, instead he is rather bland and only really has chemistry with Colbert in his opening poker scene.
Support is nothing special at all and the "baddies" never really made much of an impact and thus didn't feed the tension within the narrative.Overall this is a fairly average film with nothing special to really recommend it for.
The story is OK and is delivered with enough stuff of entertainment value to make it passable and distracting on a wet Sunday afternoon but there are much better westerns than this around..
Claudette Colbert's next to last film....
She was 51 when she made this turkey, though she still tried the best she could to make it work.
NO CLOSEUPS of her AT ALL in the film, and everything is shot from her LEFT SIDE, or straight on.
A few glimpses of her right profile when she danced and the such, but 95% from her left side.
Incredibly hokey film, the color is faded, Barry Sullivan looks bored to tears, Ray Collins spends half the movie sitting down.
Gets interesting when the mean sheriff gets involved, and his resolution caught me off guard.
But all in all, lame and dull and not up to snuff.
Watch CLEOPATRA instead for a solid Claudette Colbert fix.
Or better yet, catch the milk bath scene from THE SIGN OF THE CROSS or any scene from IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT for a good dose.
This movie just doesn't work..
What a hoot!.
My how the mighty have fallen.
Roles must have gotten mighty hard to come by for an actress of Miss Colbert's caliber.
This movie is very typical of 1950's oaters.
The one unusal aspect is that Prudence (Miss Colbert) is initially a strong, independent woman, kind of unusual for a western.
But in the end Gene Barry Sullivan Fitzgerald becomes her "protector".
This is a very cornball movie and Gregory Walcott who plays Jess Foley has got to be one of the most wooden actors ever to grace the silver screen.
One can almost see the pain on Miss Colbert's face as she delivers some of the corniest lines in movie history.
It is such a can of corn it is worth watching for the unintentional humor it delivers..
Actor Name Error.
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
"Hank" Ralston's Deputy was played by Henry Wills, not "Buzz" Henry..
I'm famous out West!.
One of the contributors to IMDb has mentioned that it'd be OK to watch this film when the weather was awful and there was nothing better to do.
Well, I've just watched it on a stunning October afternoon as the Friday afternoon movie on Channel 4.
How could I not have done in view of the fact that, apparently, Ms. Colbert was a favourite of my grandfather's?I can see what S.
H. Scheuer was getting at in his 'Movies On TV' when he said that C.C. was miscast in the lead role.
Maybe Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck would have been better and given the character the edge that it needed.As one called Chris myself I felt - with all the mentions of the name 'Chris', as if I were watching a film version of one of those 'stories all about your child' books one sees advertised in mail-order leaflets.
Was the script-writer being paid per 'Chris', or something?The Chris Mooney character was asked of his future plans.
I thought, humorously, that a re-naming to Jake, or something one would ordinarily hear more often in the context of a Western, might not have come amiss.
Alternatively, 'Texas Lady' could have the alternate title 'A Man Named Chris'!If your name's Chris you'll love this movie for all the unintentional humour.
Otherwise it has little to commend it.One of the stars I have given it is for the 'Chrisses', BTW..
Not Great.
Texas Lady is an extremely ordinary mid-50s programmer with a past-her-prime Claudette Colbert looking far too old and matronly for the part of an ambitious small-town journalist and card sharp.
Barry Sullivan provides her love interest as a poker player she beats for high stakes in the film's opening scene.
The storyline is daft, with Miss Colbert apparently considering dallying with the thuggish deputy employed by the cattle barons who own the town in which she has started her newspaper simply because he can't read.
When she realises he's a bit of a cad she decides to fall for Sullivan instead.
All in all, Texas Lady is poorly written, barely entertaining employment for has-beens and never-weres..
They Shoot Garbage, Don't They.
Horace McCoy, arguably best known for his Depression novel They Shoot Horses, Don't They, subsequently adapted into an Oscar-winning film, is credited with the story and screenplay here and clearly phoned it in.
The only possible reason anyone would want to spend time with it is the presence of Claudette Colbert in the lead role.
One can only speculate what made her get involved in something so cliché-ridden; money, a need to retain a career in front of the camera at what amounted to any price?
Who knows.
Barry Sullivan was a generally reliable support in A-movies (see, for example, Queen Bee) who just as often got to play a lead in pieces of cheese like this.
See it if you must but don't say I didn't warn you..
Very flat movie.
Flat and disappointing.
As suggested by others, Claudette Colbert didn't convince in her role, nor did the affable Ray Collins as the local big land owner, Mica Ralston.
Only towards the end of the film was the idea put over that he and the other cattle baron, aided by corrupt lawmen, were dominating the town.The barons and their henchmen never seem very threatening.The film's opening sequences suggest that Chris Mooney is an ace gambler, but he can't be that great if he's wiped out first by a woman who's only learnt the game a year ago and then by the owner of a small-town saloon, the Wigwam, Meade Moore.
And he's a very forgiving guy because he falls for the woman and immediately becomes close buddies with Moore.It doesn't seem to dawn on the barons that the US mailman would seek help once they let him through their cordon around the town.
Mind you, the help turns out be just two Texas Rangers, to whom Ralston meekly gives in.Yet again in a 1950s Western, I wondered if the sums being gambled had been inflated to present-day values to convey their size; $10,000 was a heck of a lot of money in the 1880s.Several of the supporting cast were very wooden.The best thing were some of the outdoor shots of the countryside, albeit photographed in slightly curious tints..
NOT Colbert's last film..
I read one review where they said that this was Claudette Colbert's last movie.
In fact, she made several made for TV films as well as the film "Parrish" after she made "Texas Lady".
Just thought I should set the record straight on this.
However, this same reviewer was right--everyone seemed VERY old in this film and perhaps it was in an effort to make Colbert seem younger.The film begins with Colbert beating Barry Sullivan in poker and taking control of his newspaper in Texas.
It seems that Colbert has been looking forward to beating Sullivan, as she blames him for ruining her father--who was a gambling addict.
Regardless, she heads west to assume control of the paper.
When she arrives, she finds some mighty unfriendly folks.
Later, when you find out who comes to your rescue and why, you'll most likely groan--it's THAT dumb.All in all, a stale film that simply is beneath the many talents of Colbert.
It's not a terrible film bit it certainly is a poor one--with a romance that comes from out of left field and a script that never, ever packs any excitement.
A sad little film.