The Paleface
Bob Hope brings his own brand of laughing gas to the Wild West as a would-be "painless" dentist lassoed into marrying Jane Russell. She's a shapely outlaw turned undercover agent on the trail of some varmints selling guns to a hostile Indian tribe, and he's her unwitting cover. Hope cowers and cracks self-effacing jokes while bodies fall around him ("Brave men run in my family," he quips, then runs), but he's even funnier swaggering and sneering like a kid playing cowboy in a flamboyant costume apparently stolen from theOklahoma!road show.The Palefaceis one of his best films, and the unflappable Russell is a great match. Theme song "Buttons and Bows" (which Hope delivers with a clowning mock twang) won an Oscar®, and the 1948 film spawned a sequel (Son of Paleface, costarring Roy Rogers and Trigger) and a remake (The Shakiest Gun in the Westwith Don Knotts).--Sean Axmaker