Bob Hope and Jane Russell reunite for this 1952 sequel to their hit 1948 comedy The Paleface, with Hope playing his own son, arrogant Harvard graduate Junior Potter, and Russell as a notorious outlaw known only as “The Torch.” Roy Rogers costars (with Trigger, Smartest Horse in the Movies, who gets fourth billing in the credits) as a singing federal marshal called in to catch The Torch, and he uses Junior, an Easterner come West to collect his inheritance, as bait. Hope's comedies were among the most self-referential of the era and this one features a jokey reference to Bing Crosby (his Road movie costar) and a comic reprise of the Oscar-winning song "Buttons and Bows" from The Paleface. Director Frank Tashlin, a former animator and comedy screenwriter, brings a cartoonish imagination to the visual gags (in one scene he throws banana peels for rampaging horses to slip on)—a style that found a perfect match in Tashlin's later collaborations with Jerry Lewis. This is among the silliest and most whimsical of Hope's comedies, spotty but often very funny and helmed with a comic energy that keeps the film moving at a rapid pace. Extras include audio commentary by animation film historian Greg Ford, and the bonus animated short "The Lady Said No" (1946)—a reconstructed previously lost film written and directed by Tashlin. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)
Son of Paleface
Kino Lorber, 144 min., not rated, DVD: $14.99, Blu-ray: $24.99 Volume 32, Issue 6
Son of Paleface
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