The Paleface
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Norman Z. Mcleod
Bob Hope
Jane Russell
Robert Armstrong
Iris Adrian
Robert Watson
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Sharpshooter and outlaw Calamity Jane is released from prison in order to catch renegades who have been smuggling guns to the Indians. She is ordered to Fort Deerfield, where she plans to join up with lawyer Jim Hunter and pose with him as a pioneer couple traveling West. Hunter is killed before Jane reaches him, but has left word for her to contact a friend of his named Hank Billings in the small town of Buffalo Flats. Jane is followed there, and makes a narrow escape with "Painless" Peter Potter, a timid, quack correspondence school dentist, whom she marries for the wagon train trip. Painless, completely oblivious to Jane's ulterior motives for marrying him, attempts to make love to her, but is met with a sharp thud on the back of his head every time he tries to kiss her. During an Indian attack on a pioneer camp, Jane deftly kills nearly a dozen Indians singlehandedly, but lets everyone, including Painless, believe he did the killing, hoping that the renegades will believe he is a federal agent. Meanwhile, in Buffalo Flats, Toby Preston, the renegades' leader, receives word that a new federal agent is about to arrive with the wagon train. When the wagon train pulls into town, Jane learns from Hank that two loads of dynamite came with them. Believing him to be the agent, Preston's men immediately attempt to get rid of Painless by ordering a saloon girl named Pepper to seduce him, thereby inciting the lethal jealousy of her boyfriend Joe. Painless talks tough and gives Joe until sundown to get out of town, and Jane decides to let him be killed in order to get rid of him. At the last minute, as Painless walks out into the street to meet Joe for a duel, Jane decides to save Painless in order to use him as bait, and shoots for him from a window, killing Joe. Hank later enters Jane and Painless' room with an arrow in his back and tells her that the dynamite is in the undertaker's parlor. Jane sends Painless after the dynamite, and he bravely holds up the renegades, but then is abducted by an Indian. He and Jane are then taken hostage at an Indian camp, where she confesses that she married him to aid her in catching the outlaws, but now loves him. Also at the camp is the white turncoat, Jasper Martin, whom Jane recognizes as one of the governor's aides. As Jane is tied to a stake and prepared for burning, Painless, transformed by Jane's love, rigs the dynamite to blow, and they escape. Later, as Jane and Painless leave for their honeymoon, she is pulled from the wagon by one of the horses and dragged off into the distance.
Director
Norman Z. Mcleod
Cast
Bob Hope
Jane Russell
Robert Armstrong
Iris Adrian
Robert Watson
Jack Searl
Joseph Vitale
Charles Trowbridge
Clem Bevans
Jeff York
Stanley Andrews
Wade Crosby
Chief Yowlachie
Iron Eyes Cody
John Maxwell
Tom Kennedy
Henry Brandon
Francis J. Mcdonald
Frank Hagney
Skelton Knaggs
Olin Howland
George Chandler
Nestor Paiva
Earl Hodgins
Arthur Space
Edgar Dearing
Dorothy Grainger
Charley Cooley
Eric Alden
Babe London
Loyal Underwood
Billy Engle
Al M. Hill
Houseley Stevenson
Margaret Field
Laura Corbay
Patsy O'byrne
Lorna Jordan
Jody Gilbert
Harry Harvey
Paul E. Burns
Hall Bartlett
Stanley Blystone
Bob Kortman
Oliver Blake
Lane Chandler
Syd Saylor
Walden Boyle
John "skins" Miller
Len Hendry
Duke York
Ethan Laidlaw
Rolando Barrera
Dick Elliott
Sharon Mcmanus
Carl Andre
Ted Mapes
Trevor Bardette
Kermit Maynard
Paul Dunn
Jerry Hunter
Eugene Persson
Billy Andrews
Marlyn Gladstone
June Glory
Maria Tavares
Betty Hannon
Dee La Nore
Charmienne Harker
Jerry James
William Meader
Dorothy Abbott
Lee Blanchard
Kuka Tuitama
Ralph Gomez
Milton Frieburn
Sonny Chorre
Ralph Willingham
Titus Spencer
Leroy Johnson
Tim Nelson
Chick Hannon
Ethel Bryant
Dick Farnsworth
Crew
Ralph Axness
Claire Behnke
Charles Berner
Monte Brice
George Bruggeman
Monroe W. Burbank
Art Camp
Dean Cole
Sam Comer
John Cope
Archie Dalzell
Billy Daniels
Barney Dean
Tony Denocenzo
Joe Deyong
Mary Kay Dodson
Hans Dreier
Andy Durkus
Josephine Earl
Farciot Edouart
Joe Egli
Ray Evans
Ed Fitzharris
Paul Franz
Alvin Ganzer
Stanley Goldsmith
Bertram Granger
L. Greenhill
George Hamer
Grace Harris
Edmund Hartmann
Earl Hedrick
Ed Henderson
Len Hendry
Paul Hill
Ellsworth Hoagland
Don House
Bill Hurley
Dev Jennings
Gordon Jennings
Gordon Jennings
Al Jermy
R. L. Johnston
Natalie Kalmus
Wallace Kelley
Wallace Kelley
Howard Kelly
Floyd Knudtson
Charles Leahy
Sam Levine
Joseph J. Lilley
Jay Livingston
Al Mann
Harry Marsh
Charles Mason
John Maxwell
Danny Mccauley
Richard Mcwhorter
Gene Merritt
Mickey Moore
P. Moore
R. Morales
Eddie Morse
E. Newmeyer
Gertrude Reade
Ray Rennahan
Al Roelofs
Jack Rose
Joe Schuster
Melville Shavelson
John Smirch
Lavaughn Speer
Robert St. Angelo
Gile Steele
Frank Tashlin
F. Thayer
J. Thompson
Darrell Turnmire
Robert L. Welch
Marvin Weldon
Wally Westmore
Buster Wiles
W. Willingham
Henry Wills
Bill Woods
Charles Woolstenhulme
Victor Young
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Articles
Bob Hope: Thanks for the Memories - THE CAT AND THE CANARY Among the 6 Films Featured in BOB HOPE: THANKS FOR THE MEMORY
The heart of the set belongs to three films Hope made with Paulette Goddard. The young beauty starred opposite Charles Chaplin (whom she secretly married) in Modern Times and famously was a front-runner for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, but it was The Women that showed off her talents as a sly comic actress with a sassy edge, and she became a leading lady in her own right opposite Hope in their version of the oft-filmed haunted house chestnut The Cat and the Canary (1939). Originally filmed in 1927 by Paul Leni (in a version that has yet to be topped), it's a familiar story if only for the all the clichés that it spoofs. The family of the deceased gather in a spooky old mansion (here located in the middle of a bayou swamp) of an eccentric millionaire for the reading of the will and must spend the night in the place to meet the terms of the will. Goddard is the bubbly heroine who is named sole beneficiary (and thus a target for the relative next in line), a spooky servant goes around predicting things like "One will die tonight" and there's an escaped patient from the nearby asylum (in the middle of this swamp?) running around, but never fear. The family's resident celebrity Wally (Hope) is on hand to kid the spirits away. "Don't big old empty houses scare you?" asks one relative (Nydia Westman doing a Zasu Pitts kind of goofy comic relief). "No me," quips Hope, "I've played vaudeville." It's hokey stuff with hidden doors and secret passages and a hidden treasure, which director Elliot Nugent stages with all the style and tension of a sitcom. But Hope and Goddard have marvelous chemistry and Hope is completely amiable, using wisecracks to cover up his discomfort and fear. "I always joke when I'm scared," he confesses to heroine Goddard. "I kind of kid myself into being brave." Hope's delivery makes this less a laugh line than a confession and a promise he's got integrity and the courage to both reveal his vulnerabilities and overcome them. Goddard, meanwhile, is a spunky beauty with crack timing, a born comedienne too often called upon to play the straight man and provide the sex appeal. She does both admirably here and, when the film became a hit, was rewarded with a return engagement with Hope.
The Ghost Breakers (1940) is pretty much a rehash of the same formula, this time with the haunted mansion relocated to Cuba. While Goddard is repeatedly warned away from the place by the suspicious executor of the will, radio celebrity and gossip monger Hope is on the run from New York gangsters. Like Cat, it's based on a stage play that spoofs haunted house stories and ghost story conventions, this one tossing in a zombie (Noble Johnson, doing the traditional Caribbean-style catatonic sleepwalker of a zombie), an animated suit of armor and more hidden rooms and passages. It's even less convincing than Cat but director George Marshall makes an effort to construct the proper atmosphere around these city folk on a haunted safari in voodooland. Both films manage to repeatedly get Goddard down to slips and negligees before the half hour mark and The Ghost Breakers goes one better by putting her in a swimsuit (logical attire for midnight to a spooky island) and a flimsy dress which gets torn off in a monster chase. A very young Anthony Quinn appears in two roles (a New York gangster and his twin brother!) and Richard Carlson co-stars.
Nothing But the Truth (1941) spins another gimmick-Hope is stock broker who bets $10,000 that he can tell the truth for 24 hours-into a familiar web of misunderstandings, mistaken identities and romantic antics. It plays as a more sardonic No, No Nanette with an earnest Hope at the center of the bet and a trio of conniving, lying, borderline criminal business associates (Edward Arnold, Leif Erickson and Glenn Anders) springing every dirty trick in the book on him in a string of public humiliations and private ruses. Goddard has much more fun in this one as a dizzy heiress who rattles a blue streak while falling for the hapless Hope, who can't tell anyone about the bet. It's pure stage farce, all contrivance and coincidence, blandly directed by Elliot Nugent, who just seems to let things happen as the camera rolls. Luckily there's plenty going on as the characters go sneaking around on a private houseboat, slipping in and out of bedrooms and dressing gowns while Hope wraps himself in a flouncy nightgown to escape his rivals. Not only does Hope get the girl like a real leading man, it's the rare film where Hope is the most honest man on screen. Edward Arnold, who played his share of big screen fat cats, embraces the cynical side of the persona as he tries to sell worthless stock to his customers (which doesn't seem quite as funny in light of recent real-life financial shenanigans) and Glenn Anders is almost too sleazy for the film (you may recognize him as the boozy George Grizby from The Lady From Shanghai). It's fascinating how the film manages to strike a happy ending while letting its scheming supporting cast get away with stock fraud and infidelity, winking at the audience the whole time as if we're complicit in the whole sordid business.
The four films feature Bob Hope in a role we're not used to seeing: a light romantic lead with a quick wit. His wisecracks cover up nervousness and fear but are harmless and self-effacing. Where he schemed for a kiss from the leading lady in the "Road" films, he's a genuinely nice guy here. And Goddard makes for a spunky leading lady, holding her own against opposite Hope and, in Nothing But the Truth, showing her own skills as an underrated comedienne. Both are better than their material. They also include the worst stereotypes available to African American performers, with Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson as a comic janitor in Thanks for the Memory and Willie Best as Hope's manservant, a quivering, drawling caricature who gets called "boy" by most everyone except Hope and made the butt of countless jokes (not all of them offensive), in The Ghost Breakers and Nothing But the Truth. Best establishes a natural rapport with Hope while swapping wisecracks (and often getting the better of Hope), but it's a demeaning stereotype.
The biggest disappointment with the set is its haphazard approach to Hope's career. After a quartet of films that captures Hope in his first leading roles, it's filled out with two forties films that not only feel like they've been plucked from the catalogue at random, but are already available DVD. Road to Morocco (1942) is the second of the "Road" movies that Hope made with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour and has previously been released both individually and in an earlier set of "Road" comedies. The Paleface (1948) is a very funny cowboy spoof with tenderfoot Easterner Hope as a would-be "painless" dentist who gets lassoed into marrying shapely outlaw Jane Russell. While The Ghost Breakers has also been previously available, it makes a good match with the two other Hope-Goddard pairings, but these's no real purpose to these films, not with so many other films-Hope's feature debut in The Big Broadcast of 1938, for instance, or his Dorothy Lamour pairings-that could have been included. (While The Cat and the Canary was briefly available in a public domain edition of dubious legitimacy and quality, this is the first studio release of the film.)
The six films are collected in a three-disc digipak that also includes featurettes celebrating Hope's decades-long work with the USO. It includes a pair of mini-documentaries-"Bob Hope and the Road to Success" and "Entertaining the Troops" (featuring exclusive footage of Hope's USO tours)-and the archival shorts "Command Performance 1944" and "Command Performance 1944" (which are newsreel-style recordings of the Hope-hosted radio show produced by the Army-Navy Screen Magazine) and the all-star WWII short Hollywood Victory Caravan. They spotlight yet another side of Hope, the public comedian and tireless entertainer who gave up so much time not just to entertain the troops but to take charge of the USO program and bring other Hollywood celebrities and entertainers into the fold. They make a worthy companion to these films.
For more information about Bob Hope: Thanks for the Memories, visit Universal Home Entertainment. To order Bob Hope: Thanks for the Memories, go to TCM Shopping.
by Sean Axmaker
Bob Hope: Thanks for the Memories - THE CAT AND THE CANARY Among the 6 Films Featured in BOB HOPE: THANKS FOR THE MEMORY
The Paleface (1948)
A combination of ingredients helped make The Paleface one of the top five box office hits of 1948. Not only was it Bob Hope's first color feature and his highest-grossing picture to date but it also teamed him for the first time with Jane Russell, Howard Hughes' screen discovery from The Outlaw (1943). Russell proved to be the perfect foil for Hope - sarcastic, tough and humorless. Their on-screen chemistry was so good together that Paramount re-teamed them for a sequel, Son of Paleface (1952). In her autobiography, Russell recalled the making of The Paleface: "Paramount was the first "family" lot I'd worked on....My dressing room was next to Bob Hope's. I was sent to wardrobe and fitted for period dresses plus a buckskin suit with Indian beads and fringes. Heaven! Also a corset and pantaloons. Ugh! The script by Frank Tashlin was a delight, and I discovered that my role was...dry and flat. When the critics later said I was "expressionless," I knew I managed to hit it: a stone face. Bob Hope was a ball...He's even funnier off screen than on, and everything's relaxed except his chocolate eyes, which never stop darting, never missing a thing. His name for me was "Lumpy." Russell also noted that Hope was a golfing fanatic and would occasionally slip off to play a few holes regardless of director Norman Z. McLeod's busy production schedule.
Looking back on her career, Russell once admitted that she was disappointed in most of her films but she did enjoy making The Paleface. "This picture was a complete package," she said, "No lines were changed, one director, always on schedule, and no sweat. What a pleasure! I thought, "So this is how movies are made? I can't believe it." It was fun from morning till night."
One person who didn't find The Paleface a total delight was Frank Tashlin who later told Peter Bogdanovich in an interview (for the book, Who the Devil Made It) that "after seeing the preview of it, I could've shot [the director] Norman McLeod. I'd written it as a satire on The Virginian [1929, Victor Fleming], and it was completely botched. I could've killed that guy. And I realized then that I must direct my own stuff." And he made good on his promise soon after The Paleface; his solo directorial debut began with The First Time (1952), a domestic comedy starring Robert Cummings.
The Paleface received one Oscar nomination for Best Song - "Buttons and Bows" by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans - and won in that category. It's certainly one of the highlights of the film with Hope serenading himself and would actually be reprised for the sequel, Son of Paleface. By the way, The Paleface was later remade as a Don Knotts vehicle entitled The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968).
Producer: Robert L. Welch
Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Screenplay: Edmund L. Hartmann, Jack Rose, Frank Tashlin
Cinematography: Ray Rennahan
Costume Design: Mary Kay Dodson
Film Editing: Ellsworth Hoagland
Original Music: Ray Evans, Jay Livingston, Victor Young
Principal Cast: Bob Hope (Painless Peter Potter), Jane Russell (Calamity Jane), Robert Armstrong (Terris), Iris Adrian (Pepper), Bobby Watson (Toby Preston), Jackie Searl (Jasper Martin), Charles Trowbridge (Governor Johnson).
BW-91m.
By Jeff Stafford
The Paleface (1948)
Quotes
Brave men run in my family.- Potter
Trivia
Until Blazing Saddles (1974) came out, this was the highest grossing western parody of all time.
Notes
In the film's closing scene, after Jane Russell is dragged off, Bob Hope says to the camera, "What do you want, a happy ending?" According to a Paramount News item, Paramount negotiated with representatives of Howard Hughes, who at the time of production had Russell under personal contract, to obtain the actress for this film. Information in the Paramount Collection at the AMPAS Library reveals the following information about the production: The filmmakers originally considered Barbara Stanwyck for the part of "Calamity Jane." The wagon chase scene was shot on location in Chatsworth, and other scenes were shot at China Flats, the Conejo Airport and the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, all in CA. Hollywood Reporter news items include the following actors in the cast, but their appearance in the final film has not been confirmed: Clint Dorrington, Speed Hansen, Ethel Greenwood, Marion Gray, Victor Travers, Al Stewart, Harry Ansel, Elmo Lincoln, Jack Ford, Tex Driscoll, The Cirillo Brothers-Michael, Charles and Tony-Robert Espinoza, James Archuletta, Richard Numena and Chief Sky Eagle.
Songwriters Jay Livingston and Ray Evans won an Academy Award for Music for their song "Buttons and Bows." Although Paramount News reported in October 1947 that the Robert Mitchell Boychoir had been signed to sing "Buttons and Bows" in Paleface, the song was performed in the film as a solo by Bob Hope. A recording of the song was released prior to the film's opening, and several reviews mention that it became a hit without the aid of the film. A reported three million copies of the record and 700,000 copies of the sheet music were sold as of 1949, when orchestra leader and songwriter Freddie Rich filed a plagiarism suit over the song. Paramount, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, Decca, Famous Music, RCA Victor, Columbia Records and Capital Records were named as defendants in the half-million-dollar suit. After "Buttons and Bows" was used in the film's 1952 sequel, Son of Paleface, Rich, who claimed portions of the song were taken from his score for Paramount's 1942 film Wildcat (see below, added $250,000 to his estimate of damages. According to various sources, twenty-two to thirty-two bars of "Buttons and Bows" were in question. A jury turned in a verdict in favor of Paramount, and Rich lost a later appeal in February 1955.
As noted above, in 1952, Hope and Russell starred in a sequel to The Paleface called Son of Paleface, directed by Frank Tashlin. In 1968, The Paleface was remade into The Shakiest Gun in the West, with Alan Rafkin directing and Don Knotts and Barbara Rhoades starring. Among the many other films featuring Martha Jane Canary, popularly known as "Calamity Jane," are: the 1923 Famous Players-Lasky film Wild Bill Hickock, directed by Clifford S. Smith and starring Ethel Grey Terry and William S. Hart (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30; F2.6360); the 1936 Cecil B. DeMille film The Plainsman, starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40; F3.3472); the 1949 film Calamity Jane and Sam Bass, directed by George Sherman, and starring Yvonne de Carlo and Howard Duff; and the 1995 United Artists film Wild Bill, directed by Walter Hill, and starring Ellen Barkin and Jeff Bridges.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States Fall October 30, 1948
Released in United States Fall October 30, 1948