Roughly 15 minutes into the film, Errol Flynn is trying to sneak into San Antonio. He rides up alongside a moving stagecoach and manages to board it directly from his horse - with luggage! As he's shimmying in, NASCAR-style, his eyes first fall upon the old lady to his right. Watch his eyes. Then catch the ''whew." Then he looks to his left and sees Alexis Smith. ''Well, hello!" he says as he flashes that million-dollar smile.
''Move over, honey." Horrifed at the impudence, Smith says, "The show doesn't start until after supper." "Oh, are we gonna have supper too?"
Bang. I'm dead. Whoever wrote that sequence should be in the screenwriter's Hall of Fame. And they should have shown this clip when the Academy awarded Flynn his Irving Thalberg Memorial trinket for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures.
What's that you say? Flynn never got that recognition? Obviously the academy wouldn't recognize acting and star power when it's right up there on the 35-foot-wide screen.
Oh, the movie. Something, something cattlemen, rustlers, range war, who cares.
Did I mention how beautiful Alexis Smith is? The Penticton Peach, I like to call her. Let's make that a thing.
Could I get a director's cut that eliminates all of S. Z. Sakall's lines? Even for an industry wherein ''comic" sidekicks ruined more movies than they improved, Sakallshyt is the most ruinous. Fat, ugly, thickly accented, unfunny doofus. I loathe him even more than Gabby Hayes, Walter Brennan, Harvey Lembeck, Robert Strauss, Ralph Malph (but not Potsy), and Squiggy (but not Lenny).
In fact, my theory on why Montana (released years later) is about 14 minutes short is that preview audiences filled in their feedback cards and 94% of them wrote a variation of, "More smokin' hot Alexis Smith, less ugly, fat doofus S. Z. Suxall." Being world-class chiselers, they didn't bother shooting more film of Smith, they just hacked out most of Suxalot's scenes. Whereas San Antonio checks in at an over-drawn hour-49, which means they could have clipped all of Suxballz scenes and brought this thing in at a tight 90. Had they invested in writing more ambiguity into Smith's character, San Antonio could have been a Technicolor western noir featuring two excellent villains instead of a 3-director jumbalaya of pandering to every possible audience demographic.
''Move over, honey." Horrifed at the impudence, Smith says, "The show doesn't start until after supper." "Oh, are we gonna have supper too?"
Bang. I'm dead. Whoever wrote that sequence should be in the screenwriter's Hall of Fame. And they should have shown this clip when the Academy awarded Flynn his Irving Thalberg Memorial trinket for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures.
What's that you say? Flynn never got that recognition? Obviously the academy wouldn't recognize acting and star power when it's right up there on the 35-foot-wide screen.
Oh, the movie. Something, something cattlemen, rustlers, range war, who cares.
Did I mention how beautiful Alexis Smith is? The Penticton Peach, I like to call her. Let's make that a thing.
Could I get a director's cut that eliminates all of S. Z. Sakall's lines? Even for an industry wherein ''comic" sidekicks ruined more movies than they improved, Sakallshyt is the most ruinous. Fat, ugly, thickly accented, unfunny doofus. I loathe him even more than Gabby Hayes, Walter Brennan, Harvey Lembeck, Robert Strauss, Ralph Malph (but not Potsy), and Squiggy (but not Lenny).
In fact, my theory on why Montana (released years later) is about 14 minutes short is that preview audiences filled in their feedback cards and 94% of them wrote a variation of, "More smokin' hot Alexis Smith, less ugly, fat doofus S. Z. Suxall." Being world-class chiselers, they didn't bother shooting more film of Smith, they just hacked out most of Suxalot's scenes. Whereas San Antonio checks in at an over-drawn hour-49, which means they could have clipped all of Suxballz scenes and brought this thing in at a tight 90. Had they invested in writing more ambiguity into Smith's character, San Antonio could have been a Technicolor western noir featuring two excellent villains instead of a 3-director jumbalaya of pandering to every possible audience demographic.