Silver Queen (1942) User Reviews

Priscilla heads west

[jjnxn-1 · 6/10 · 25 January 2013]

Average drama was Priscilla's only western. She was never a great actress, not to say she wasn't a good one-she was, but was never given a role that would challenge her. Of course being a Warners girl that would have been tough anyway with Bette Davis and Ida Lupino usually getting the roles that required heavy lifting. She was however a warm presence in all her films providing a pleasant center to her pictures as she does here.

The picture has a strong supporting cast with Eugene Palette and Guinn Williams livening up the movie during their scenes and Bruce Cabot playing his typical conscienceless worm. The weak link, wasn't he always, is George Brent. Providing his usual stiff, bland performance he adds nothing to the film.

The other weakness is the script, most of the action happens with no real sense of conflict. The running time is short so perhaps there was originally more exposition. As it stands now most of the story moves along with no real explanation or sense of struggle for the characters.

The film is handsome and was Oscar nominated for it's sets which at the time included costumes since the categories had yet to be split. It certainly has a rich look and Priscilla and the other women are decked out in sumptuous gowns and head-wear and everything is played out on expensive looking ornate sets. It's nomination for musical scoring is a bit more of a surprise since there is nothing really outstanding about it.

A routine film but if you are a fan of any of the stars an enjoyably brisk 80 minutes.

nice production values, but a tad miscast

[blanche-2 · 5/10 · 23 April 2016]

Silver Queen stars Priscilla Lane as Coralie Adams, a young woman from a wealthy family whose father (Eugene Palette) loses it all -- a silver man -- in a high stakes poker game played with a professional gambler, James Kincaid (George Brent). Kincaid, learning that Gerald Forsythe is engaged to Coralie, gives the deed for the mine to him. Cabot is a bad lot, despite the society trimmings, and just keeps the mine for himself.

An real card shark, Coralie gambles in order to pay her father's debts.

The film takes place in New York and San Francisco in the 1870s.

This just isn't much of a movie. Priscilla Lane is miscast. She was a lovely woman and had a very sweet, vivacious quality, but the role called for someone a little tougher. The original star was to be Ellen Drew. The production company borrowed Brent, Cabot, and Lane from Warners. They should have borrowed perhaps Ida Lupino.

Not sure if it was intended to be a B movie, though it comes off like one.

Pop Sherman

[boblipton · 6/10 · 25 January 2013]

Harry "Pop" Sherman spent most of his career producing superior B westerns and was best known for creating and running for several years the Hopalong Cassidy franchise. With this movie he made a bid for the big time and was rewarded with a couple of Oscar nominations, but the total effect, looked at from seventy years later, is an entertaining picture that is, nonetheless, a high-class B picture.

This movie features several Warner Brothers people, both in front of and behind the camera, all trying for their big break, but once you get past the charity party sequence, there is little energy in the performances. Perhaps that is why the camera keeps moving constantly.

LIke an A-picture with a B-movie script.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 4 February 2013]

George Brent was a fine actor and I always liked Bruce Cabot as a heavy--so why is "Silver Queen" such a dull and unlikable film?! After all, it had a lot of money behind it--it was made by one of the top studios, Warner Brothers. But somehow, the film never seemed interesting and suffered from one HUGE problem problem--and quite a few small ones.

The film begins around 1870. There's a huge charity party for the mega-rich and folks just toss around money like it grows on trees. The biggest spender that night is the ultra-cool professional gambler, James Kincaid (Brent). He immediately catches the eye of Coralie Adams (Priscilla Lane) and you know that according to formula by the end of the film the two will be wed. That's THE big problem, as one small unsaid conversation between the two could have easily resulted in their marrying and none of the problems that occur later. I HATE films where it all hinges on one unsaid thing--and in this case, James gives a silver mine to Coralie as a wedding present but never bothers to tell her!! Later, after YEARS have passed, he realizes she never married her no-good fiancé (Cabot) and he basically stole the mine! Why didn't he just ask her how the mine was doing? Why didn't he wonder why she never thanked him? Why did he give the mine to the fiancé to hold and not directly to her?! Frankly, I wish James had just handed the deed to Coralie and kept me from wasting my time--because what occurs between this and the end of the film is dreadfully dull and tough to believe. What else is tough to believe--that Coralie would become a top professional gambler. Priscilla Lane played very sweet ladies in film--SWEET LADIES. She was NOT the least bit convincing in a role that should have been given to an actress with more edge to her personality. Overall, the film is sluggish and rarely interesting. And, you'd think that such a prestige film would have been better.

An avocation becomes a profession

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 1 May 2013]

Silver Queen casts sweet young Priscilla Lane in a role that probably should have been done by someone like Barbara Stanwyck. She plays a New York society girl who has to use her gambling wiles to pay back a debt that father Eugene Palette incurred before he died. What was an avocation to her becomes a profession.

The debt that Palette incurred is as a result of a high stakes poker game where he lost the root of the family fortune, a Nevada silver mine. Palette lost it to George Brent a professional gambler, but a cavalier if there ever was one. He turns the deed of the mine over to society swell Bruce Cabot who has been engaged to Lane, perennially it would seem.

But Cabot is one society rat who keeps the mine for himself. In the end the showdown comes between Brent and Cabot. Guess who wins?

Though Silver Queen is a western as categorized, very little time is spent on the lone prairie, most of the film takes place in New York and San Francisco of the 1870s. That showdown climax is abrupt and rather clumsily staged.

But Silver Queen's biggest problem is Priscilla Lane. Barbara Stanwyck who played tough and determined women could have carried this part off with a fraction of her talent. Sweet girl next door Priscilla Lane just was not convincing in the part.

The film received Oscar nominations for Musical Scoring and black and white Art Direction. But that only serves to inflate an essentially B picture.

Plenty of potential turns from silver into sliver...of a plot.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 27 July 2017]

Costume, business oriented westerns have plenty of drama already attached, and with a great cast, a potentially explosive set-up and a handsome look, this is plot-wise missing the elements to make it memorable. Priscilla Lane plays the daughter of a wealthy mine owner who loses everything in the depression and leaves Lane penniless and in debt when he dies. But as fast as she loses everything, she gains it back, paying off creditors and ending up with a tidy profit. Two suitors (George Brent and Bruce Cabot) vie for her hand, and it's up to her to discover the truth about each of them to decide whom she'll fall fully in love with.

Too many minor details convolute the story in forgetting about the major ones, and as enjoyable as this is for the period color, the stars and the fact that a strong woman is presented, it's a sullen disappointment. Eugene Palette is fine as Lane's father, destroyed by the loss of his fortune, and Janet Beecher adds authoritative matriarchy as Cabot's powerful mother. I figured out right away whom Lane would end up with, which destroys any elements of surprise that this film might have had. Still, with handsome period detail and nice photography and a few intense action sequences, this is worth looking for.

A queen and two kings

[jarrodmcdonald-1 · 11 September 2022]

Though this picture was released through United Artists, it originated at Paramount. It has all the high class production values we'd associate with a Paramount picture, from its elaborate sets and decorative costumes to its detailed street scenes and ornate carriages. It's an expensive looking motion picture, and they've borrowed some of Warner Brothers' top talent, including George Brent and Priscilla Lane. Miss Lane in particular is very glamorous...in fact she was never photographed this well at Warners.

The supporting cast includes Eugene Pallette as Miss Lane's father. He plays a man that made his fortune on a silver mine in Nevada, who had come to New York City to raise a daughter with all the finest advantages in life.

By nature he's a gambler, and the opening sequence of the story depicts an evening when Lane is hosting a charity event at their opulent home. Pallette gets a bit carried away and gambles too much. The next morning it is revealed he lost the deed to his mine, and he no longer has the assets or bank balance to pay off a slew of creditors.

Bruce Cabot turns up as Lane's suitor. He's supposed to be protecting her best interests when her father suddenly dies and all those debts threaten to put her into the poorhouse. He proposes marriage, but she wants to square things with the creditors that are foreclosing on the family manse-- on her own terms. So she heads west with her maid to find a job.

Her idea of a job is to become a gambling queen at a casino in San Francisco. She reasons that if cards got her father into trouble, then cards can help her get out of that trouble. With this type of "logic," she may not be playing with a full deck but hey she's game; and if anything, she has plenty of determination to make it without Cabot's direct assistance.

While Lane is in Frisco she rakes in a bunch of dough then sends the winnings back east to Cabot, who has agreed to settle accounts with the men her father owed. However, Cabot decides to ignore the wolf at the door; and he invests the money in a venture involving the Nevada mine that Pallette lost to George Brent.

A large part of the narrative involves Lane's conflicted feelings about both men. She seems to have more romantic inclinations towards Brent, but she foolishly relies on Cabot to the point that it could cost her everything again. There are some nice scenes where she is wined and dined by Brent, and I have to say that Mr. Brent is right in his element as a debonair squire about town.

This all leads to the final sequence in Nevada. The men have gone to check on the mine, since it is rumored to have another rich vein. Meanwhile Cabot is planning to wed Lane to cover up any fraud he's committed. There is a huge brawl inside a hotel when Brent confronts Cabot with evidence about his shady business dealings.

The dramatic highpoint comes when Cabot pulls out a gun and Lane rushes down the grand staircase to stop the men. She gets caught in the middle, a shot rings out and she goes down.

Of course we know she will pull through. When she regains consciousness as well as her senses, she will decide that Brent's character is the one who's done right by her. He's the one she should spend the rest of her life with, since she will be happiest with him.

What I like most about the film is how leisurely plotted it is. It gradually builds to the big fight scene and shooting at the end, but is not in a hurry to get there. The story gives us a lot of slower moments to take in the characters, situations and surroundings. It's a modest 'A' film. I would call it more of an indoor western as opposed to an outdoor western. It's about gentlemen and gentlewomen during a rough economic period of American history...a time when progress and uncertainty existed side by side.