A Woman for Charlie

source: A Woman for Charlie

I absolutely adore this movie, and am so sad that it isn't available on VHS, laserdisc, DVD or any premium channels to speak of, since I tend not to watch movies on channels with commercials. Packed with great laughs and touching performances, the movie teaches some of life's great lessons about beauty truly being in the eye of the beholder, love, stereotyping, and yes, even Christianity and forgiveness. My fondest wish is that someone from the Westerns channel would happen onto this gem and pick it up for broadcast during family viewing hours. Maybe even on DVD???? Pop the popcorn, light the fire, and settle in for a feel-good movie that doesn't rely on pyrotechnics, violence, sex or foul language to define "entertainment value."

When charley's mail order bride doesn't show up, he threatens to leave town. But he's the only blacksmith in calico! So the townsfolk band together to come up with a plan to make charley change his mind. But of course, this scheme will backfire somehow. (they all do!) some funny lines in here, for a simple western. And the hat budget must have been sky high... i've never seen so many top-hats and derbies on the menfolk. Familiar faces in the cast list... nanette fabray, jack cassidy, jim backus, wally cox. Sub plot with a nearly blind bounty hunter. It's good. Nothing too earthshaking or new. Directed by tony leader; written and co-directed by ranald macdougall. He was married to fabray, but died at age 58, a couple years after making this film. Blocker himself died at 43, just two years after this film. Was probably best known for his role on bonanza. Jack cassidy died at 49. Wally cox at 48.

Jack Elam is no doubt the best actor ever to play a ramrod(cowboy bully). In this he play a near blind bounty hunter. Dan Blocker and the whole cast played their roles to perfection. This is definitely a well acted and produced movie.

Cockeyed Cowboys at Calico County is those pictures that on first sight you doesn't give nothing to it, first the casting is staffed by almost retirees actors, second low budge and comic oriented, Charley (Dan Blocker) is a friendly and quiet blacksmith, he has a secret plan to get a wife thru mail order bride, he conceals it from the whole town, however when his bride is about to come at Railway station, everybody are there and knew all previously, but she doesn't show up, depressed he decides leaves the town, the people for many reasons try help him, a singer-dancing girl (Nanette Fabray) who works at saloon's town should be a perfect bride to Charley, she accepts as a long await revenge, somehow Charley gained his heart thru this loving kindness, good heart and mainly by pureness of feelings, this picture has a chemistry with Charley and the audience, further the whole casting improves a lot on their own characters, everyone are involved to help Charley to be happy, Jack Elam is outrageous funny as blind bounty hunter, a movie to see and to revisit in a proper time!! Resume: First watch: 2014 / How many: 2 / Source: DVD-R / Rating: 7.5

This movie hounded me for YEARS. We saw this on a double-bill with PUFINSTUF, and all I could remember was it being a family-friendly western with a saloon gal as part of the plot. Thanks to the online Chicago Tribune archives I found the listing and solved the mystery. Someone had posted the movie to YouTube and this is definitely the movie I had remembered. Good performances by a veteran cast (the opening credits panning through a turn of the century catalog were pretty creative), this is an ideal movie you can enjoy with the family, hopefully Universal will finally make this available on DVD or BluRay.

Comedy western's are a bit of a rare bread, happy to see Dan Blocker in this role not long before his all to early death. Blocker pays the gentle giant who wouldn't hurt a fly, so well. This is not an in-depth movie, if you watch it and take it for what it is, it will make you smile. A loved the almost blind bounty hunter who used to inteerogate hat stands and the back of a horse. Mickey Rooney is the best known name of the townspeople and shows excellent comedy timing. This just made me smile. My favourite line of the movie, "I'd shoot you dead if you weren't such a curiosity"

Done in the same spirit as the 'Over the Hill Gang' Westerns, this one instead relies on a lot of traditionally non-Western genre character actors to spice up the comedy elements in the story. Bonanza's Dan Blocker finds himself in the lead here in a somewhat characteristic role, that of a big lug with a soft spot in his heart for a gal he wants to marry. The story is similar to a Blocker made for TV movie from 1968 titled "Something for a Lonely Man", in which his character is basically the same guy, but just a bit more oblivious to the frontier gal displaying her affection for him. Whenever Charley Bicker (Blocker) isn't on screen, the supporting players have a good time hamming it up, with Jim Backus, Mickey Rooney, Wally Cox and Noah Beery, Jr. leading the charge. Jack Elam flits in and out of the story as a hilarious blind gunslinger on the trail of a thousand dollar bounty for outlaw Panama Jack. The town folk come to rely on Kittrick (Elam) to run saloon gal Sadie's (Nanette Fabray) suitor out of town to grease the skids for Bicker's romance. I got the biggest kick out of Mickey Rooney uttering some self deprecating lines as they relate to his own matrimonial history (married eight times!!!). The first time was when he saw the wrong mail order bride get off the train, stating that he 'wanted one of those'. The better gag was when he offered to tell Charley about all the trouble he's had with women. I bet that line dredged up a lot of memories, as he was with wife number seven at the time. I still can't get over Ava Gardner being his first. There are also a number of sight gags you'll have to keep your eye out for. I liked the sign in the barber shop providing double duty with 'Special Rates for Funerals', along with the Calico saloon featuring 'Whiskey - 10 cents; Good Whiskey - 15 cents'. What the heck, be a big spender for the extra nickel. For all you Bonanza fans who couldn't get enough of Hoss Cartwright, this is an entertaining family Western which manages to sidestep the issue of saloon gal Sadie's real profession; at one point she calls herself a dance hall singer and dancer. She fesses up to her shady history with Charley in a later scene by referencing her 'bad' past, but it gets glossed over pretty quickly with Charley's blasé attitude. Sadie keeps Charley and the viewer up in the air about what she'll really do when it comes to walking down the aisle, but if you've seen enough of these kinds of stories, there's only one way it could turn out. And it does.

The towns Black Smith and his anvil are headed back east after a bout of loneliness gets him down, his mail order bride did not wait for him? His friends might let him drift but there is not another one for 50 miles, or an anvil, and that is a bigger problem. Now his poker playing buddies need to step up and do for him what no self respecting buddy would do to a bachelor, find an unattached available, marriage minded female fast, but where? They slowly gather the whole town into their dastardly, good deed doer's plot, even the only dance hall girl in town. Without a doubt each new solution creates a new problem, when is Jack due back?

An adult version of the types of comedies that were being made at Walt Disney, this is for adults who find the Three Stooges geniuses and find Mel Brooks and Blake Edwards too challenging, and Woody Allen films too intellectual. It's exactly as I describe above, the story of the dimwitted blacksmith Dan Blocker, stood up and conned out of his life savings by a "mail order bride". Not wanting to find a blacksmith in this dust bowl of a western town, the townsmen cajole saloon hostess Nanette Fabray to take on the part, resulting in a bunch of silly innuendo and ridiculous plot twists. A great supporting cast completes the ensemble of mostly famous TV faces at the time. Most of them, completely realizing that the material is beneath them, add extra oomph in their line delivery, making this a burlesque of the western genre, minus the usual plot lines that dominated them. This is at its best when the always delightful Nanette Fabray is on screen, especially when feigning "ladylike" behavior when around the prickly women of the town who stuck their nose up at her when they believed her to be a woman of ill repute but treat her different in her disguise. Among those in the cast are Jim Backus, Wally Cox, Mickey Rooney, Henry Jones, Marge Champion and Jack Elam. They all do their best with the material they are given, but what has been proved time and time again, comedy is a much harder genre than drama. Getting people to laugh is not as easy as stirring up people's emotions, and if I had a laugh from this for each emotion that exists, I'd be a statue.