The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1937)

Fantastic!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Preston Foster plays a saloon owner who takes in a child after she is born. Unfortunately, her mother died in childbirth. He uses her because he sees her as a source of good luck. But she begins to turn hard. Poker Flat is one of those Western towns that has lost its soul. Bad guys run free and Foster's saloon is their watering hole and a source of gambling. Soon a minister and a teacher show up and the little girl is plucked from her safe haven and put in a school. In the sappy movie world of the thirties, Foster falls for the school teacher and the minister tries to settle things down. Sadly, for Foster, he incurs the wrath of the people. The conclusion is right out of the single minded moralist's handbook. This has an outstanding cast, but the story is quite simplistic, even though it is based on a Brett Harte story.

"The Outcasts of Poker Flat" is a classic film that was originally made in 1919 and was remade several times--and this 1937 version is just one of them. It's based on two stories by the famous old west author, Bret Harte. And, to me it LOOKS like two separate stories as you watch the film--one excellent but familiar one and one that left me totally flat and didn't see to fit.This film is set just after the famed Gold Rush began and concerns growing pains that town experienced. In the earliest days, law was pretty much nonexistent and life was tough. However, with growth comes the forces you'd expect in bigger cities--churches, government, lawmen and folks looking for a civilized lifestyle. One of the forces pushing BOTH directions in the film is Oakhurst (Preston Foster). He is a gambler and his bar is the center of vice in town. But, he also sees that change is inevitable--especially when he meets up with a nice lady, Helen (Jean Muir), and the preacher (Van Heflin). What's next for all these characters? See the film for yourself.The best thing about the film are some of the actors. While Preston Foster is pretty much forgotten today, he was a leading man in the 1930s--and you can see why. Additionally, while Van Heflin is young, he already shows his abilities as a supporting actor (he later received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). However, the story is a bit too disjoint for me--with the ending not fitting in terribly well with the rest of the film. Overall, a time-passer but not a lot better.

The Outcasts of Poker Flats (1937) ** (out of 4) Decent version of a couple Bret Harte stories has been told many times over the years including a 1919 version by John Ford. This one here features Preston Foster playing John Oakhurst, a gambler working out West when the gold rush struck. He's got the biggest business in town but things start to change when a teacher (Jean Muir) and a preacher (Van Heflin) show up. The story itself wasn't too original but I found the performances to be so great that they made the film worth viewing. Foster is extremely good in the lead because he really makes one believe the character development that he goes through. I thought the actor managed to do the more action packed scenes well and he made you believe that he was this tough gambler who really didn't care about anyone but himself. Muir is also extremely good in her part and she and Foster has some great chemistry that leaps off the screen. Heflin easily steals the film as the young preacher who shows up hoping to change this rather dirty town. The supporting cast includes nice work from Virginia Weidler, Si Jenks, Al St. John and Billy Gilbert. I think the biggest problem with the film is the direction of Christy Cabanne who simply never makes it too interesting. Visually the film is quite flat and a lot of the emotion that the story is going for never comes off and this is especially true during the final minutes. Still, the performances are so good that fans of the actors will still want to check this out.

The second of the four filmings of Bret Harte's best-known Gold Rush mining story was mostly shot in a saloon set with many closeups. Virginia Weidler (who would play Katherine Hepburn's younger sister in "The Philadelphia Story") prefigures Tatum O'Neal's Oscar-winning performance in "Paper Moon" as the cardsharp devoted to the gambler John Oakhurst, suavely played by Preston Foster. Van Heflin was surprisingly (to me anyway) handsome but already very earnest here as the parson. The good girl they both want is played with some spunk by Jean Muir and the partner pining for Oakhurst by Margaret Irving. The film looks good (credit cinematographer Robert De Grasse) but lacks the sparks of Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart in "Destry Rides Again." As in that film, the virtuous hero is not a goody-goody and is slow to resort to violence.