A Lady Takes a Chance (1943) + Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) – DVDs

A LADY TAKES A CHANCE
**/**** Image C+ Sound B-
starring Jean Arthur, John Wayne, Charles Winninger, Phil Silvers
screenplay by Robert Ardrey
directed by William A. Seiter

FLAME OF BARBARY COAST
**½/**** Image B- Sound B
starring John Wayne, Ann Dvorak, Joseph Schildkraut, William Frawley
screenplay by Borden Chase
directed by Joseph Kane

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Such is the enduring celebrity of John Wayne that there exists a market for even his most humdrum and lacklustre vehicles–a rule which the current DVD releases of A Lady Takes a Chance (1943) and Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) proves to perfection. Here is a pair of the Duke's least iconic roles, both of which hinge on their incongruity with their star's western legend: using the actor as a found object to be installed in some alien landscape, they force him to struggle with a fish-out-of-water intrigue before coming to the conclusion that his place remains at home on the range. As such, they're of importance only to superfans and tangentially interested buffs–they're interesting as trials-by-fire for Wayne iconography but only marginally tolerable when taken on their own terms.

The romantic comedy A Lady Takes a Chance is the less interesting of the pair. A clumsy attempt to mate urban screwball with rural western, its saga of city girl and country boy only sparks to life when its goings-on are more ludicrous than humorous. The city mouse is Molly Truesdale (Jean Arthur), a popular gal with three would-be suitors from which she remains aloof; no wedding bells in her immediate future, thinks she. However, a cross-country bus tour lands her at a rodeo, where Duke Hudkins (Wayne) hurtles off a horse and on top of the unsuspecting Molly. Their subsequent meet-cute is one for the books: "I've never been sat on before," says Molly. "I've never sat on anyone before," says Duke.

For a while, the film finds all manner of ways to induce Molly's astonishment, from the predictably stiff drinks served up at the local saloon, to the fight that breaks out at said establishment, to the (apparently) erotic spectacle of Duke standing around being John Wayne. She winds up in thrall, as city girls supposedly do when confronted with he-men, and ascribes charms and powers to what is essentially a very polite chunk of granite. So unlikely and extreme is her slack-jawed awe for Duke that the film has, for a brief time, a bit of daftness to keep it from sinking into abject mediocrity.

But that time ultimately passes into the machinations of a throwaway plot. Missing her tour bus, Molly has to spend the night before catching her ride up in "Gold City;" the lady-friendly Duke tries to have her stay in his room, which Molly naturally takes the wrong way. Tedious resentment ensues, as does a blind-alley nail-biter in which Duke's horse gets sick for about five minutes. By the end of the movie, the craziness gives way to the merely commonplace as Duke fears being fenced in and provides the final, minor source of tension in a film that is blessedly short but hasn't much else going for it.

Flame of Barbary Coast hangs together better. Here it's Wayne–playing another character named Duke–who wanders into unfamiliar territory, as his desire to collect a debt lands him in the thick of 1906 San Francisco. Unfortunately for Duke, his debtor, Tito (Joseph Schildkraut), is a player on San Fran's lively and law-bending Barbary Coast and would rather keep his money–he contrives a wildly improbable night of gambling in order to take it from him. But the Montana rancher is not one to be outfoxed: after learning the fine art of gambling (a lesson that takes an entire lap dissolve), he comes back to beat Tito–and win his lover/star attraction Flaxen (Ann Dvorak) in the bargain.

This is the kind of movie in which characters make life-altering decisions on a whim, only to forget about them several scenes later. A single gambling loss drives the protagonist to not merely show up his tormentor, but also to cash in his entire net worth and open a music hall/casino for the sole purpose of competing with him. Of course, this requires him to oppose the entire corrupt Barbary Coast cabal as well, leading him to, yes, run for mayor. Duke/Wayne packs several lifetimes into his stay on the coast, capping it all off with heroic acts amidst the great San Francisco earthquake–he selflessly saves Flaxen from a falling proscenium arch while Tito ponders how to use the disaster to his advantage.

But although the blunt-spoken Wayne seems ridiculously out of place amongst the rest of the film's slicksters, the film is lavish enough (by Republic Pictures standards, at least) to pass the time without too much discomfort. Perhaps director Joseph Kane is no John Sturges, let alone Ford or Hawks, but he knows how to make the most of the production values and uses them to distract from the insubstantial nature of the plot. His strategy: seat the principals in front of some nice bit of set and let the camera run–the dialogue goes in one ear and out the other while we ogle the nice bits of plaster in the background. It's a good thing too, as that dialogue is anachronistic when it isn't simply silly: on hearing that his lover has been paralyzed in the quake, Tito sums it up: "Things are going to be tough!"

THE DVDs
Both black-and-white films are presented in their original 1.33:1 ratios on DVD, but it's Flame of Barbary Coast that wins out in the print-and-transfer department. A Lady Takes a Chance, while eminently visible, suffers from occasional print damage, and can be a little fuzzy during dark scenes: a late scene involving a dinner by candlelight suffers the most, bleeding into muddiness around the edges of the frame. Flame looks tattered during its initial frames but improves steadily from there, and while far from razor-sharp, the image is still more than adequate to the task. The unshowy Dolby Surround remix on each of these Artisan-distributed discs is clear and crisp, though Flame sounds slightly sharper. There are no extras on either platter.

• A Lady Takes a Chance
  86 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround; CC; DVD-5; Region One; Republic/Artisan
• Flame of Barbary Coast
  92 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround; CC; DVD-5; Region One; Republic/Artisan