Wyoming

Looking at WYOMING, one might believe it a B version of George Stevens' classic oater, SHANE. Of course, MGM proudly stated that they never produced B movies, but they did produce *ahem* lead features of lesser quality like the Andy Hardy series and those of Wallace Beery, who played amiable cusses in all his movies in this period. Add in familiar faces from other MGM movies of the period like Henry Travers, Bobs Watson, Anne Rutherford, Stanley Fields -- at RKO, Fields was the Beery lookalike -- Marjorie Main and gigantic, beautiful mountains on every vista, even though the ground that everyone stands around is as flat as a pancake -- the high-minded viewer might be tempted to draw invidious comparisons.

The fact that SHANE wouldn't be shot for more than a decade also argues against this being a retread, but there are some amazing parallels to this story of a feckless wanderer set in the Johnson County Wars. Well, there is nothing new under the sun and less than that in westerns.

Director Richard Thorpe doesn't have to use his patented method of getting cheap performances out of mediocre actors here -- when they flub the line, change the camera angle -- and the whole thing is shot in standard MGM Gloss, with the credited DP, Clyde De Vinna being their Exotic Locale cameraman. In short, there's little that's wrong with this MGM programmer. If you enjoy Wallace Beery's mugging -- and I do -- you will enjoy it. However, you'll have to squint a bit, especially if you have recently seen an Alan Ladd movie.