Thu 23 Apr 2009
Movie Review: LOUISIANA HAYRIDE (1944).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Old Time Radio , Reviews[5] Comments
LOUISIANA HAYRIDE. Columbia, 1944. Judy Canova, Judy Canova, Ross Hunter, Richard Lane, George McKay, Minerva Urecal, Lloyd Bridges, Matt Willis, Hobart Cavanaugh. Director: Charles Barton.
Let me start out by saying that is indeed a crime movie, no matter what you may have deduced to the contrary, based on the title of the film and who the leading star is.
Judy Canova plays a country bumpkin in this movie – no surprise there, right? – who’s swindled out of her farm’s oil option money by two rambling grifters – two rambles ahead of the law – who promise her a career in Hollywood. The leading role, in fact, in a movie called — you guessed it — Louisiana Hayride.
Little do these guys know what they’re in for. You’re probably one step ahead of me, and for that matter, I’ll let you stay there.
Canova made an entire career of looking homely, with pigtails and Hee Haw costumes long before Hee Haw came along and gave hillbilly music a bad name. But her brand of youthful innocence, combined with a good-natured honesty and a strong sense of humor, usually at the expense of city slickers like the pair of crooks in this movie, made her a star in the 1940s, at least in small town America.
I wonder if her movies ever played in Boston or New York City. They did in Cadillac, that small town in Michigan’s upper lower peninsula where I grew up, although this particular one is almost as old as I am.
In spite of her incessant mugging for the cameras, Canova really did have a good singing voice, which is on display to great advantage several times in Louisiana Hayride. A pair of songs I recognized immediately were “Shortnin’ Bread” and “Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey,” which probably tells you more about me than you want to know.
Besides being a better than average belter of southern fried song hits, Judy Canova was also not quite as homely as the characters she played on the screen. I found this photo of her taken when she was older, and to me, she’s quite a handsome looking lady.
There are jokes being cracked and funny business going on continuously in this movie, in between the songs, that is, and I have to tell you I enjoyed them all, still being a small town kind of guy at heart.
PostScript. I nearly forgot to mention that Judy Canova was also a hit on radio, with her self-named series running on NBC from 1945 to 1953, which is essentially when her movie career came to a close as well.
You can listen to four episodes online here, and with a little searching, I’m sure you can find more.
Among the group of regulars in the cast were Hans Conreid, Mel Blanc and Sheldon Leonard. (One of these fellows came up for discussion not too long ago, as regular readers of this blog will quickly recall.)
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Another good review is posted here: http://thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2009/04/queen-of-hillbillies.html
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Several of her movies played at Film Forum here in New York a few years back, and Judy’s daughter was in the audience. She spoke at the screening and took questions about her mother’s life and career. I saw “Joan of Ozark” and “Hit the Hay” which I enjoyed very much.
A link to the series they were featured in is below:
http://www.filmforum.org/films/bmusicalsfilms.html
April 24th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Everyone seems to have watched this!
The inside look at poverty row film studios was interesting. So was Lloyd Bridges’ satirical commentary on the cinema. Ross Hunter was unexpectedly good, too – he later became a major producer.
The whole Canova family is in a silly but highly inventive musical “Artists and Models” (Raoul Walsh, 1937). They sing “The Ballad of Jesse James”. They are just part of a big supporting cast.
April 25th, 2009 at 12:50 am
You’re right, Mike, and I thought I was the only one …
Judy Canova fans of the world, stand up and be counted. Hurray!
April 25th, 2009 at 2:54 am
I was once on a hayride in Louisiana, but Canova didn’t show up. Still this was a good little film. I haven’t seen the others, but suspect they were in the same vein.
Artists and Models featured Jack Benny and Ida Lupino among others and Canova is third billed behind them. She wasn’t in the sequel, Artists and Models Abroad (1938 D: Mitchell Leisen) with Benny and Joan Bennett, which was a better film, or the superior 1955 remake (or at least reuse of the title) by Frank Tashlin with Martin and Lewis and featuring Dorothy Malone, Anita Eckberg, Eva Gabor, and one of Shirley MacLaine’s earliest roles (a fairly smart send up of the whole Wertham comic book controversy with a typically silly spy plot thrown in).
Richard Lane, who appears in Louisiana Hayride, was one of the workhorses of the B movie lot, especially at Columbia where he was the long suffering policeman convinced that Chester Morris Boston Blackie was less than reformed, and always willing to get in the way of Blackie’s investigation.
Lloyd Bridges was fairly active at Columbia in this period too, playing in everything from the serial, Secret Agent X-9 (the second version of the Dashiell Hammett/Alex Raymond comic strip)as the hero, to a Nazi in one of the Warren William Lone Wolf entries (Passport to Suez D: Andre De Toth), and even a Three Stooges short.