Alternative Film Guide

In Old Arizona (1928)

Direction: Raoul Walsh and Irving Cummings. Screenplay: Tom Barry; from O. Henry’s (aka William Sidney Porter) 1907 short story "The Caballero’s Way." Cast: Edmund Lowe, Warner Baxter, Dorothy Burgess

TIRED IN THE SADDLE

What makes Irving Cummings and Raoul Walsh’s In Old Arizona (barely) watchable decades after its highly successful initial release is its sheer bizarreness. Technically, the picture is of interest as a museum piece, for despite the use of the American Southwest’s wide-open spaces as background, In Old Arizona is not that different from other static, slow-moving, and poorly acted early talkies.

From a thematic standpoint, however, this racy Western is a must-see because of its definite pre-Production Code sensibility, which allows murder to go unpunished and offers dialogue containing numerous risqué double entendres. In one curious exchange, for instance, Sgt. Dunn and the Cisco Kid caress each other’s strategically placed guns while discussing their remarkable size. (A toned-down version of this sequence was later used in Howard Hawks’s Red River.)

Despite fierce competition, top-billed Edmund Lowe displays the most amateurish acting among the three leads, with Dorothy Burgess and her grating pseudo-Mexican accent coming a close second. Lowe’s overall blandness also badly damages the credibility of the story, since it’s hard to believe that the saucy Tonia would give the dull Sgt. Dunn a second look, let alone risk her life to assist him.

In a role fit to order for the dashing and lighthearted Mexican heartthrob Ramon Novarro (then at MGM), Fox replaced a badly injured Raoul Walsh with second-rank leading man Warner Baxter as the Cisco Kid. (Irving Cummings replaced Walsh behind the camera.)

But no matter how much brown makeup was plastered on his face, Baxter is ridiculously miscast. His Kid is an overwrought, tired-looking, middle-aged anti-hero (O. Henry’s Kid was twenty-five but looked twenty; Baxter was thirty-nine but looked forty-five), whose Mexican accent is of the "Jew are beeyouteefullll" variety. (Considering that his character says he’s Portuguese, Baxter’s Uzbek-Mexican accent not only sounds phony but it’s also incongruous with the part.)

From today’s vantage point, it’s difficult to understand why Baxter received such high critical praise at the time — even going on to win an Academy Award as best actor of the year. Surely, acting styles were much different then, but it could also be that the critics and the Academy’s voting committee were rewarding the actor for his perseverance. Baxter had been kicking about Hollywood, often on the verge of stardom but never quite there, since the early 1920s; with In Old Arizona, he had finally made it as a star of the first echelon. (At one point in the 1930s, Warner Baxter was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood.)

Now, even though time has not been kind to his Oscar-winning performance, the actor does have one brief but memorable moment. Before riding alone into the desert night, he delivers his last line with a mixture of sadness, resignation, and irony: "Her flirting days are over," he says about his beloved. "She’s now ready to settle down." Sure she is. The dead don’t cheat.

Synopsis:

The Cisco Kid (Warner Baxter) is a twisted Robin Hood of the Arizona desert: He robs the rich to help his poor, greedy self.

In this bowdlerized version of O. Henry’s ruthless bandit of the American Southwest, the Kid is also a childlike character who likes to joke around with the guys, tease his pursuers, and make love to a spicy Mexican woman. That last habit turns out to be quite dangerous, for the señorita in question, the trampy Tonia María (Dorothy Burgess), is nothing more than a heartless double-crosser.

Despite all the expensive gifts the Kid brings her, Tonia just can’t resist a man in uniform. That man is Sergeant Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe), a cavalry officer who wants to capture the Kid dead or alive.

Not surprisingly, Tonia decides to help the new object of her affection. But the Kid — nickname: El Conejito (Little Rabbit) — is ready with a few deadly tricks of his own.

Notes:

Fox billed In Old Arizona as the first outdoor talking picture. Raoul Walsh was to direct and star as the Cisco Kid, but a road accident during a location-scouting trip forced him to withdraw from the picture. (He can be seen as the Kid in some of the long shots.) Walsh lost an eye as a result of the accident.

…

In O. Henry’s short story "The Caballero’s Way," it is implied that the Cisco Kid’s real name is Goodall. In the film version, the Kid mysteriously becomes a Mexican who talks about being Portuguese.

…

Warner Baxter and Edmund Lowe reprised their In Old Arizona roles in The Cisco Kid (1931). Baxter also played the mustached bandit in The Arizona Kid (1930) and in Return of the Cisco Kid (1939). After that, Cesar Romero took on the role in several cheap Westerns. Duncan Renaldo followed suit in the mid-1940s, and reprised the role a decade later in the television series The Cisco Kid. A 1994 made-for-TV movie of the same name starred Jimmy Smits.

…

Although barely remembered today, Warner Baxter was one of the top male stars of the 1930s. Lloyd Bacon’s Academy Award-nominated musical 42nd Street (1933), W.S. Van Dyke’s Penthouse (1933), Frank Capra’s Broadway Bill (1934), and John Ford’s The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) are a few of Baxter’s important productions of the era.

…

Variety estimated that Warner Baxter was the second-highest-paid show business personality in the United States in 1940 (after Claudette Colbert), at $279,907. Bing Crosby came in third.

IN OLD ARIZONA on DVD

THE LOST CITY

IN GOOD COMPANY

THE HURRICANE

JEWEL ROBBERY

DESPERATE

A HATFUL OF RAIN

THE DA VINCI CODE

THE LAKE HOUSE

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

THE BARKER

Comments RSS