Take Me to Town (1953) User Reviews

Lyrical poem to the American west

[lorenellroy · 7/10 · 14 November 2007]

Ann Sheridan plays Vermilion O'Toole ,a saloon singer who seeks to evade the law by taking refuge in a remote lumber community where she develops a fondness for widower Will Hall who in addition to being a lumberjack doubles as the local preacher.

She sees no reason why she should not make him a good wife and be a fine mother to his 3 boys -a sentiment they endorse The community is outraged but she is nothing if not determined and sets out to stake her claim on Hall .This involves fighting a bear ,getting rid of an old lover and turning out to be an indefatigable fundraiser for the construction of a new church .Shot in lustrous Tecnicolor by Russel Metty and directed with deftness and lyricism by Douglas Sirk, this is a tad syrupy now and again but is also a warm ,affectionate and tender evocation of the spirit of the American West

Vermillion O'Toole, a girl with Oomph

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 12 April 2018]

We all have to start somewhere and for Ross Hunter, producer of some big budget spectacular soap operas for Universal in the 50s and 60s started out with this western family comedy where three kids match make saloon entertainer Ann Sheridan with their father logger/preacher Sterling Hayden. Sheridan is going incognito trying to avoid marshal Larry Gates and a former boyfriend outlaw/gambler Philip Reed who also escaped from Gates.

Sheridan is traveling under the name of Vermillion O'Toole, a tribute to the tint of red in her hair. Hayden's three kids are taken with that hair even in their pre-pubescent years and decide she'd be great.

Surprisingly she takes to being domestic and of course it all works out despite some of the more narrow minded folks in the town who think she's not a suitable mate for the town's spiritual leader.

Being an entertainer calls for Sheridan to have a number or two which she delivers with gusto. Special mention has to be given to Lee Patrick who plays the cigar smoking saloon owner who goes back with Sheridan. Her mission is to distract Gates and distract him she does.

Take Me To Town still holds up well after over 60 years as good family film making.

Familiar but fun...

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 29 September 2017]

The story idea in "Take Me to Town" isn't the most original. In the 1930s and 40s, Hollywood made several similar stories about folks hiding out from the law with a nice family that miraculously reforms the crook. The biggest difference between those films and this one is that the person hiding out is a lady.

When the film begins, Mae (Ann Sheridan) is on a train in the custody of the Marshall. However, she is able to slip out a window and evade the law. Soon she's rechristened herself 'Vermillion O'Toole' and is a singing sensation in the local saloon. But when a photo of her gets out, the law comes looking for her...and she makes a break for the only place she knows she can hide. You see, three little toe-headed boys had just asked her to come to be their housekeeper...with the hope that they'll marry their daddy! I don't think she knew about their ulterior motives...but hiding out with this family seems like a great idea. But the dad (Sterling Holloway) is not thrilled with a woman in the house. What's next? See the film.

While the story is a bit familiar, the film is handled quite well. While it's far from a must-see, it's a perfectly wonderful time- passer...a pleasant and entertaining movie.

Lite Sirk

[grahamclarke · 16 June 2003]

The forms the final part of Sirk's early Americana trilogy. As with the first two films, ("Has Anybody Seen my Gal" and "Meet Me at the Fair") it's is a lightweight, extremely affectionate look at American society in the early part of the 20th Century. Along side the abundant good nature, greed and political corruption were dealt with in those films, whereas in this case its acceptance and tolerance for the "other" to which focus is given.

Much of the charm of the movie stems from Ann Sheridan's winning and endearing performance in which she's ably paired by Sterling Hayden. Sirk handles the children particularly well and they turn in lovely comical performances.

While a lot of fun to watch, it's of special interest only in the context of Sirk's career in which he would go on to make far more important and weightier films than this.

You've Seen Movies Like This Before

[boblipton · 6/10 · 24 March 2024]

Saloon entertainer Ann Sheridan has to take it on the lam when her louse of an ex-boyfriend, Phillip Reed shows up, one jump ahead of the law. She finds refuge taking care of three small boys for widowed Sterling Hayden. But local gossip starts to run wild; Hayden is the local preacher.

Given this is director Douglas Sirk's first movie for producer Ross Hunter -- it's Hunter's first time in that role -- there might be a tendency to look at this and compare it to the suburban weepers the pair turned out in the second half of the 1950s. I think that would be a mistake. Given their next collaboration was a 3-D western which Sirk said was his favorite American movie, perhaps we should be a tad less auterist in our appraisals, and a bit more commercial. This looks like a bunch of similar 1950s comedies, including HOUSEBOAT. Given that Hunter co-produced it with Universal's high-volume Leonard Goldstein, likely this was simply another assignment for Sirk, one which he turned out as well as he could, before moving on to the next as it came up. As it stands, Hayden gives a surprisingly relaxed performance, and Miss Sheridan does what she does best, which is doing what she's doing at the moment. The kids are cute, and there's a nice role for Lee Patrick as Miss Sheridan's older dance-hall friend.

Dance Hall Singer and the Preacher

[PretoriaDZ · 10/10 · 13 August 2009]

Vermillion O'Toole needs a place to hide out after escaping from the law (that wanted her for something she hadn't done). So she accepts the offer of three little boys to stay with them while their father is gone logging (even though he's a preacher on Sundays). She doesn't know they are hoping she'll marry their father and save him from marrying a prissy town woman. It's a comedy so everything comes out all right in the end.

One very interesting note on this movie is that the preacher actually lives his life by Biblical principles, not condemning Vermillion but encouraging her subtly to follow the good he knows is in her heart. Sterling Hayden and the script portray him as a Christian who is neither a bigot or a milquetoast.

You need to have a town to be taken to one.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 23 January 2019]

Here, the town is wishful thinking, on the verge of being built and needing a church big time. It isn't just for the saloon run by Lee Patrick but the ladies who point their fingers in judgment at Patrick and the wild Ann Sheridan yeah charge above reproach themselves. Three young kids take a shine to Sheridan and decide to try to pair her with their father, Sterling Hayden, who happens to be the local preacher, although one without an actual structure to preach in. It's Sheridan's idea to put on a musical show to raise money and as easily judgmental as they were, the snooty ladies of the town soon are participating in it as well while continuing to make judgment. In the meantime, Sheridan must hide from the local law, Larry Gates, who has been searching for her after she was involved in a scandal involving gamblers at another local saloon.

Moderate entertainment, this features a few musical numbers and apparently leading lady Ann Sheridan and film producer Ross Hunter try to get this produce as a Broadway musical. As talented as Sheridan is, the idea of her holding down a musical comedy for a long run doesn't seem realistic, and besides there's not really enough to see material here to make a full-fledged musical. In any sense, it would be too close to other musicals of the 1940's and probably be considered dated by the time they got around to getting it produced.

That leaves us with just the film to sit back and enjoy, colorful, but typical and somewhat corny, but aided by Sheridan's lively personality, an amusing sequence where Patrick and boyfriend Gates are spotted by Sheridan in a precarious situation, and by the rugged but gentle masculinity of Hayden. the children are prominently featured in the first quarter but become a minor presence in the last part. It's a film with too many ideas going on that really doesn't come together with all of its pieces.

Celebrate a great producer.

[jromanbaker · 10/10 · 11 November 2017]

This was Ross Hunter's first film as producer for Universal. After his death the obituaries were hardly kind to his great body of work, and that was just before the elevation of Douglas Sirk in places like the English press as being a great director. Without disparaging Sirk I would like to stake a claim that Ross Hunter made Sirk great, and to even claim that 'Take Me to Town' is equal to Sirk's great trio: 'Magnificent Obsession', 'All That Heaven Allows' and 'Imitation of Life'. In some ways it is better as it is bursting with a life and energy that made many other musical westerns pale in comparison. One obituary in The Independent stated that Hunter was gay, but failed to mention that he and his partner supported AIDS charities. Hunter loved life and his enthusiasm towards that life produced great acting where even Sterling Hayden looks as equally responsive as Ann Sheridan whose role in this film outshone any of the others I have seen of hers. She glows, and her wit and charm radiate across the screen. Hayden responds and together with the equally great Lee Patrick make this a ten out of ten musical. At the time it may have been just another double bill film, but after seeing it I defy anyone not to feel better about life. This was Ross Hunter's great gift to the cinema but derided by critics he battled on. Was this due to homophobia? I bet many suspected at the time he was gay and it must be said that in many a film of the Fifties at Universal the screen glowed with good looking guys, in small roles and big. He may have adored women actors as some critics snidely observed, but he had an equal eye for the male and was perhaps the only film producer of the time to do so. Who else could have made Sirk see Sterling Hayden in beautiful soft focus close-up so that all of the audience could see, wow, what a hunk? Hayden bathed in Ann Sheridan's great presence in total sexual equality. Ross Hunter contributed to Gay culture during a dark time and let us celebrate him for it, not deride him. Sirk responded to the inspiration, as did other lesser directors knowing exactly what magic Hunter and the audience wanted. This is true cinema.

God knows his own.

[dbdumonteil · 2 November 2009]

Saloon singer Ann Sheridan on the run finds love with widower preacher Sterling Hayden who has got three cute kids.It's not a great Sirk movie,(it's perhaps even one of his least interesting efforts) but it predates some aspects of his soon-to-come "all that Heaven allows" (one could begin to detect in " has anybody seen my gal?" ): a man and a woman who are worlds apart and whose relationship is blamed by the well-meaning holier-than -thou ladies in the town.The children steal the show from the stars in every scene they are in.The "show in the show" trick,on the other hand ,having little connection with the plot ,is not very exciting.

Mislabeled saloon girl with heart of gold finds her man

[weezeralfalfa · 8/10 · 2 May 2017]

During the opening and closing credits, Dusty Walker sings "The Tale of Vermillion O'Toole", with differing lyrics at the beginning and end. The lyrics at the beginning make it sound like she's rather naughty, but the point of the film is that she has been unjustly labeled as such. She claims she was unjustly arrested for illegal activities perpetrated by her boyfriend, while she was a dancer in his saloon.

Early on, we see Mae(Ann Sheridan) smash the window of the restroom in the train car in which she is being transported to trial. She squeezes herself out (ouch, that jagged glass remaining!), and tumbles down a slope, unharmed! Cole, her ex-boyfriend, also being transported, knocks out the marshal, unlocks his handcuffs, and pushes him off the train! When she arrives at a train depot, Mae changes her name to Vermillion O'Tool and buys a ticket for a little town in the mountains called Timberline. There she meets Rose: the proprietor of an upscale saloon called the Opera House. She gets a job with Rose as her lead dancing girl. Soon, 3 tikes manage to run into the saloon and see Vermillion performing a song and dance. They immediately take a liking to what they see, and inquire if she would like to be their mother, since their real mother is deceased and their father is away all week, logging. She declines making a commitment, but agrees to walk home with them. Their father, Will Hall, is shocked to find a strange woman in his house cooking for his kids. At first, he says she can't stay as his maid, because he can't afford a maid. But, after she saves the boys from a bear, he relents: a maid with no pay except room and board. Meanwhile, Cole and the marshal separately have traced her to this town, Cole tries to convince her to go with him, but she won't. Rose tries to cover for her with the marshal.

Vermillion soon decides that Will was unlike any man she had ever met. Aside from his logging job, he was a preacher to an open air congregation on Sundays, and had a ready made family for her to mother. Initially, most of the locals considered her a trashy tramp, especially inappropriate for a preacher's wife. But, Will was persistent that she appeared to be basically a good and talented person, who just needed a chance to prove herself. Her chance came when she joined the committee for raising funds to build a church. She suggested they could make more money by putting on an open air show. She uncovered useful hidden talents from many of the villagers, that just needed sprucing up. Unfortunately, their piano player got mad and left. So, Vermillion called upon Rose to bring her talent to bear. Meanwhile, her ex-boyfriend, Cole, and the marshal show up separately, and tangle. While the play is going on, the marshal takes several shots at Cole, climbing up the cliff behind the stage. These shots nearly coincide with shots that the villain in the play is supposed to take: almost, but not quite, leading to bewilderment where they came from. Incidentally, the name of the play is "Take Me to Town". I will leave the remainder of the screenplay for you to see.

Clearly, the take home message is that generalizations about the character of people in various social strata don't necessarily apply in individual cases. Most women in the entertainment business want to eventually settle down and have a family. In these respects, the screenplay is a bit preachy at times, but what can you expect when you have a minister and a woman ready to reform her life as the lead characters. The film also has some continuity, contrivances, and reality problems, but its combination of drama, humor, and charm compensates for these deficiencies.

Ann Sheridan, Sterling Hayden, and Phillip Reed are fine in the main character roles in this comedic drama. Lee Patrick clearly was quite a character in general, and made a charismatic saloon manager as Rose. She's especially memorable as the cheroot-smoking piano player, wearing a fancy female outfit, but topped with a man's bowler hat, strongly cocked to one side. She was the antithesis of what Vermillion hoped to become, but they still identified with each other.

Shot in color, it's available at YouTube

Ann Sheridan's in town

[jarrodmcdonald-1 · 19 April 2024]

At this point in his Hollywood career, director Douglas Sirk had moved from artistic-minded independent productions to routine genre assignments at Universal. Sirk would remain with the studio through the end of the decade, scoring some of his biggest hits. Universal provided Sirk with better budgets as well as the chance to collaborate with more "A" list stars.

TAKE ME TO TOWN is a western comedy that Sirk made as part of a trilogy for Universal. The other two films were MEET ME AT THE FAIR, starring Dan Dailey; and HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY GAL?, with Rock Hudson. These pictures were filmed in vivid Technicolor, and they were nostalgic diversions about America at the turn of the century. TAKE ME TOWN differs from the previous two, since it does not have an urban setting. It's interesting to see a German-born filmmaker do so well with movies about American life.

TAKE ME TOWN stars Ann Sheridan and Sterling Hayden. There are some lovable kids and an assortment of character actors in supporting roles who are all quite memorable. Sheridan performs a lively musical number in the beginning that is aided considerably by cinematographer Russell Metty's use of Technicolor. In fact the whole picture bursts with energy, even in some of the more pedestrian scenes where not much seems to be occurring.

The storyline works on two levels. First, there's an adult angle with Sheridan as a "naughty" saloon gal. She's running from the law in much the same way Betty Grable was on the lam in THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND. Only Sheridan's character was in the wrong place at the wrong time when her previous place of employment had been raided. She escapes from a marshal and legs it to a sleepy logging town. When she gets to Timberline she makes friends with the owner of an "opera house" (code for brothel) and gains employment. She does a nightly floor show to warm up the customers. No opera music is ever heard.

While performing "opera," she changes her name to Vermillion O'Toole (so named because of her bright red hair). Despite these seedier elements, the storyline works on a wholesome level, too. A family angle occurs when Vermillion develops a soft spot for the three young sons of a widowed preacher (Hayden).

The boys leave home one day when pa goes off logging. They've heard that a snooty society woman intends to become their new ma, and this simply won't do. So they head into town to find someone more suitable to join the family. You guessed it. They quickly spot Vermillion when they sneak into the "opera house." They try to convince her that she should become their new ma, since she's just so darn pretty and pa would certainly like her!

At first Vermillion is unwilling to leave with the boys, despite bonding instantly with them. But when the marshal (Larry Gates) arrives, hot on her trail, she decides maybe going off to the country and playing mother might not be such a bad alternative. Of course when preacher Will Hall learns there's a strange woman at his house with the boys, he says she will have to leave first thing in the morning. This isn't proper.

In the meantime, Will enjoys her cooking and realizes that his kids have really taken a shine to Vermillion. And the following day, when Vermillion saves the youngest one from being mauled by a bear, Will takes a shine to Vermillion, too. She's obviously not going anywhere. Her days of singing "opera" are over, and she is going to become a proper ma to Corney, Petey and Bucket.

The story will have a happy ending. Vermillion will become domesticated, and at some point, the audience knows she will be cleared of any wrongdoing. But what makes the story work so well is the chemistry Sheridan has with Hayden, and the rapport they develop with the boys. Also, there are a few engaging subplots.

In one situation the marshal undergoes a transformation, deciding that life is not necessarily black and white, and there are gray areas. Plus we have the townsfolk, particularly a ladies aid group led by the snooty society woman, who dial down their prejudices and allow Vermillion a chance to prove herself. She does this during a special outdoor festival, where they stage a show with melodrama and musical interludes, to raise funds for the construction of a new church.

Ann Sheridan seems to excel at playing maternal roles, something she didn't have a chance to do during her years at Warner Brothers. In some ways, this film reminds me of Republic's drama COME NEXT SPRING, where she again played a rural mother who put her kids first.

Sterling Hayden also seems to do well at this material. It's nice to see him in lighter scenes and prove he could ably take on a paternal role. He seems very relaxed and smiles a lot on camera, which goes against the persona he developed for himself in his other films. They all seem to be having a good time making this movie. Perhaps that can be attributed to Sirk's smooth direction and Sirk's ability to put actors at ease and elicit more natural performances.

It should also be pointed out that TAKE ME TO TOWN was the first motion picture Ross Hunter produced on his own. He'd been associate producing, directing dialogue and acting prior to this. It was Ann Sheridan who encouraged him to take on increased responsibility behind the scenes. They'd previously done two other films together. Of course, Sirk and Hunter would go on to make less nostalgic films at Universal. But this was the beginning of something great.