The still-infant RKO Pictures put itself on the map with this lavish musical adaptation of Flo Ziegfeld's stage hit, complete with 40 minutes of early Technicolor footage. One of the rare film musicals to capture a sense of what Ziegfeld's productions were like, the film featured numbers mostly shot as if on a stage. To star as the Texas Ranger hunting for the masked outlaw the Kinkajou, the studio borrowed John Boles from Universal, a logical choice given his success in earlier musicals like The Desert Song (1929). But they made headlines with their choice of leading lady. To play Rita, the woman courted by Boles even as her brother is under suspicion of being the robber, they cast silent star Bebe Daniels, who had just jumped ship from Paramount, where she had been told she had no career in talking pictures. Although she had yet to speak on screen, she campaigned for the title role and impressed audiences and critics with her easy handling of the musical numbers. The other hit of the film was the comic team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, making their film debut after being paired by Ziegfeld for the original stage version. They would become RKO's first big comedy team.

By Frank Miller