Sundays With The Boys: Ride 'em Cowboy

 

The boys return for their first film of 1942 with Ride 'em Cowboy. In sitting back and thinking over the films that Abbott & Costello have done to this point, the last four (of the five total) were all shot and released in 1941 (Buck Privates started production in mid December 1940 but was still shooting into mid January 1941 before its release at the end of that month). That's a crazy hectic schedule when you also realize that this film was also shot in 1941 (and their next film Rio Rita started production in 1941)...especially with three of them being service comedies and the other two (this film and Hold That Ghost) being shifted around to accommodate getting the service comedies out sooner. Five of their first six films were all in production during 1941. Crazy.

Anyway, Ride 'em Cowboy finds the boys working as vendors at a Rodeo, getting into a kerfuffle with their boss and accidentally "running away" (when they're locked in a cattle car) to a Ranch (but not before Costello accidentally winds up engaged to an Indian squaw) and team up with some of their Rodeo friends who are there to help train a writer of Western novels become the real cowboy his press agent claims he is.

The formula that was set up in One Night in the Tropics still remains (albeit the boys are the "A" story and the romance is the "B" story which may propel the plot, but gets less screen time). The boys have some great bits (Herd a cows, Poker, The Diving Routine) and there's lots of great physical comedy as Costello gets dragged by horses, kicked by cows, etc. The romance story (faux Western novelist falls in love with Cowgirl training him) isn't intrusive at all, but it also isn't good either (are they ever?).

There are plenty of musical numbers, mostly by The Merry Macs, but we also get the film debut of the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald (singing "A Tisket A Tasket"). Fitzgerald is so good in her one number (she does have more screen time that just that as a friend to lead Anne Gywnn) that one hopes she gets more than that one number (which she does when she accompanies The Merry Macs on one number which mixes swing and square dancing...which is kind of ahead of the time).

By this film the boys have settled into a formula that was obvious but hadn't actually taken over and become tired. There are some gems coming up in the next few weeks (I'm a big fan of Who Done It), but I can see the potential for repetition to set in quickly.

Ride 'em Cowboy has been released on VHS, Laserdisc (as part of the Bud Abbott & Lou Costello Comedy Collection Box Set) and on DVD twice (first as part of The Best of Abbott & Costello Volume One and then as part of Abbott & Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection).

Be seeing you.