Take Me To Town

Rather ridiculous but no less appealing for it, this has framed showgirl Vermillion O’Toole hiding out in the smalltown home of lumberman-cum-preacher Hayden, at the request of his three young sons (suprisingly tolerable), themselves on the hunt for a new mom, in horror of the locally-available spinsters. The townsfolk are predictably scandalised, but when she helps with a fund-raising show for the new church and the real villain is vanquished, all ends with satisfying predictability. Hayden’s lighthearted mode is uneasy, but Sheridan has a whale of a time; the female costumes are outrageously colourful and the sight of the new family unit processing to the creek in matching red and white striped swimming costumes typifies the cheerful tone of Sirk’s hymn to a bygone era of the Great American Outdoors.

d Douglas Sirk p Ross Hunter, Leonard Goldstein sc Richard Morris ph Russell Metty ed Milton Carruth ad Hilyard M. Brown, Alexander Golitzen, Bernard Herzbrun m F. Hugh Herbert, Milton Rosen cast Ann Sheridan, Sterling Hayden, Phillip Reed, Lee Patrick, Lee Aaker, Harvey Grant, Dusty Henley, Larry Gates, Phyllis Stanley
(USA, 1953, 81m)