The Dude Goes West (1948)

The greatest movie ever made..!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

A Brilliant Conflict

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Eddie Albert is cast as amiable Daniel Bone, a New York City native of Brooklyn, who owns a gunsmith business in Brooklyn. He decides to pull up stakes from the Big Apple and head off westward to Arsenic City, Arizona, where everybody totes a hog-leg. Unmistakably a tenderfoot, Bone appreciates a good read and his familiarity with literary tomes helps him out of one tight spot after another. He heads west as the Horace Greeley adage goes and meets a pretty young thing, Liz Crocket (Gale Storm), who is bound for Arsenic City herself to cash in on her dead father's mining claim. Naturally, "Ellery Queen, Master Detective" director Kurt Neumann and "A Ticket to Tomahawk" scenarist Mary Loos and "White Buffalo" scribe Richard Sale pit these two young people through the standard-issue romantic wringer. No sooner do they meet at a railway depot than Liz's mother tries to turn her against all men, particularly Bone. They start out hating each other and end up in each other's arms. This lightweight but entertaining comedy doesn't demonize Native Americans. The Paiute Indians call Daniel 'Big Wind' because he fools them into liking him with parlor tricks after they escort Liz and he to their village. This lively 86 minute sagebrusher from Allied Artists is worth watching. Albert had a knack for playing upstanding citizens and rarely made a fool out of himself. Latin sensation Gilbert Roland plays The Pecos Kid and he makes a charismatic villain. Career heavy Barton MacLane plays desperado Texas Jack Barton. Although the titular hero is a tenderfoot, he has spent so much time working on firearms that he can light a wooden match with a bullet. He is a crack shot and this comes in handy when he must retire two gunslingers trying to abduct the heroine. "The Dude Goes West" is a western spoof related in flashbacks with Albert narrating the saga for his grand children. Amusing from start to finish.

I strongly recommend you see "The Dude Goes West" for one big reason--it's not like any other western. If you think about it, there really are only about a half dozen different plots for about 99% of the old westerns. Yet, somehow, the studio came up with some novel ideas that invigorate this film and make it quite charming.Eddie Albert plays a gunsmith (Daniel Bone) who lives in New York. The problem is that with civility reigning there, he decides to move to the West where there will be a lot more business. However, he is pretty naive and folks don't take him very seriously--after all, he's a fancy East Coast dude. Little do they know that despite his naiveté, he is a VERY well-read and resourceful guy...and a guy who turns out to be a crack shot. So, again and again when he comes into a collision course with various baddies (such as a tribe of Indians, Barton MacLane and Gilbert Roland), Daniel is able to somehow come out on top. It's all very charming and enjoyable and actually is somewhat reminiscent of Albert's later TV series, "Green Acres"--where he plays a New Yorker who yearns to move to the country and where he certainly does NOT fit in, either! It also didn't hurt that the film was so well-written and clever. Well worth your time--especially if, like me, you are tired of the same old recycled plots in westerns. This is anything but familiar! I really loved this film.

One of my favorite films of the 40's. This mild mannered comedy western hits all the right notes. One might have imagined it made by Bob Hope and a Paramount lovely like Gail Russell or Diana Lynn. But instead it sneaks under the radar with a minor cast of Eddie Albert and Gale Storm who both deliver their best ever film performances. I can't prise this highly enough. It is a must see film for movie lovers. You will thank me. I recall seeing this in 1948 and thinking at the time how good it was and why didn't it make more of an impact. There are just certain films that time treats kindly and this is one of them. Small films that stay with you like THE GREAT DAN PATCH, THE LUCKY STIFF, OUT OF THE BLUE and IVY.

The year is 1880-something, and gunsmith Daniel Bone (just one "o") decides to abandon tame New York for a part of the country where a person in his line of work can expect to be kept a little busier. The thoroughly decent Daniel might be a tenderfoot, but between his professional skill with firearms and his great reader's head full of knowledge, he turns out to be more than a match for the desperados he meets en route to-- and in-- lawless Arsenic City, Nevada. Our boy doesn't do badly with the local Native tribe, either. Now if he could just get past the defenses of Miss Liza, an over-cautious innocent who's come West to find her late father's lost gold mine...Eddie Albert is quite charming as the titular dude in this slight but enjoyable, gently comic Western. In fact, there's charm to spare here: James Gleason endears as the grizzled prospector-sidekick, Barton McLean (later Gereral Peterson in "I Dream of Jeannie") wins one over as the most sympathetic of a host of black-hatted bandits, and Gale Storm is refreshingly non-cloying as your standard-issue spunky, naive heroine. Things never descend to the cartoonish, allowing Albert to get through a couple of on-the-trail ballads (which he croons in a pleasant tenor while strumming a guitar), a dramatic display of "Indian sign language," and even an idealistic law-and-order speech to an angry mob with his dignity fully intact. Indeed, one's inspired to wonder why the future small-screen star never quite scored as a cinematic leading man-- he certainly seems to have had the potential.Available on DVD-- think I'll watch it again.