1940 was the year Marjorie Rambeau tried unsuccessfully to step into Marie Dressler's shoes. Not only did she take on Dressler's title role in the sequel Tugboat Annie Sails Again (1940), co-starring Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan, but she stepped in to partner Dressler's most popular co-star Wallace Beery in this comic Western. Beery stars as a prospector who, with sidekick Leo Carillo, stumbles on a dying miner with information about an invaluable Borax mine. Douglas Fowley steps in to help him and court Rambeau's daughter (Anne Baxter, in her film debut at the tender age of 17), but he really means to relieve Beery of any claim his newfound bounty. The film was created to exploit Beery's popularity as a big-hearted child man, but the attempt to build a new screen team didn't work out, despite Rambeau's considerable talents at both comedy and drama (she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Primrose Path the same year). In his next film, Beery would find his second great screen partner when Marjorie Main stole another comic Western, Wyoming, right out from under his bulbous nose.

By Frank Miller