Classic Review: The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)

In 1938, Variety reported that The Cowboy and the Lady, a film that had been languishing in development hell for several years, had managed to set an infamous record. Thirteen different screenwriters had been brought in to take passes at the screenplay and none of them had been able to whip the relatively uncomplicated premise into shape. During a period in which screenwriters were expected to turn out scripts at an alarmingly fast rate, the film stood out as a mid-budget romantic comedy that was lavished with meticulous attention to detail. What would have been seen as a throwaway piece of entertainment under any other circumstances became tabloid fodder that provided trade publications with juicy gossip for several months.

When The Cowboy and the Lady was finally released, the hubbub quickly died down, as it proved to be a delightful romp that didn’t crash and burn in the way that its most vicious critics had predicted it would. However, evidence of the film’s troubled production does bleed through into the finished project. The script is littered with unexpected tonal shifts, poorly structured character arcs and plot points that are unceremoniously jettisoned from the narrative twenty minutes into the proceedings. Poor, bewildered H.C. Potter was left to pick up the slack and he didn’t succeed in hiding the fact that nobody had a coherent artistic vision for this project.

The wildly uneven plot centers around Mary Smith (Oberon), the elegant, dignified daughter of presidential candidate Horace Smith (Henry Kolker). She is so desperate to protect her father’s reputation that she avoids socializing with people her own age and scrupulously avoids taking risks. Her father encourages her to spend a couple of months in Palm Beach after the learns that the police found her dancing in a nightclub with her uncle. Within a couple of hours of arriving in Florida, she catches the eye of Stretch Willoughby (Cooper), a soft-spoken cowboy who decides to propose to her after she tells him a falsified sob story about her lower-class origins. Smith worries that he will come to despise her if she admits that she was dishonest about her past and agrees to marry him in order to avoid being publicly humiliated. She does not inform her relatives of this unforeseen turn of events and finds herself in a tight spot when her father announces that he intends to visit her in Palm Beach.

From the very beginning, the audience is set up to expect a traditional screwball comedy, in which a zany heroine manages to get away with meddling in the affairs of others and making rash decisions. Every single plot beat will be familiar to fans of Preston Sturges but somewhere along the line, the film mutates into a thoughtful character study about a young socialite attempting to leave behind the identity that her father has impressed upon her while falling in love with yet another overbearing patriarchal figure. There’s no reason why these two approaches couldn’t have seamlessly fused together but The Cowboy and the Lady never achieves that sort of delicate balance. At every turn, it feels as though you’re watching two completely different films that have been frankensteined together. The disconnect between individual scenes is palpable and it ensures that the final scene doesn’t pack the sort of emotional wallop that you expect out of a late-1930s blockbuster.

The film is elevated by Gregg Toland’s cinematography, which accentuates the exotic, ever so slightly dangerous allure of the Old West. He makes imaginative use of a shallow depth of field and differentiates between Florida, Texas and Washington D.C. in a fairly subtle manner. Toland also projects a sensuous atmosphere onto locations that don’t seem all that extraordinary when considered on their own terms. He rises above the mediocrity that surrounds him and invests a considerable amount of effort into a picture that occasionally feels like it is running on autopilot. He is assisted by costume designer Omar Kiam, who drapes Oberon in a wide variety of gauzy capes and crushed velvet nightgowns. Their craftsmanship is truly astonishing and you find yourself getting sucked into a tired, formulaic narrative because they bring so much to the table.

In the end, it’s difficult to make a case for The Cowboy and the Lady as an underrated gem. Its weaknesses can be easily identified and it suffers from comparisons to the works of Ernst Lubitsch and Gregory La Cava. Viewers will probably won’t be blown away by the film as a whole but one would be remissed not to mention Toland’s glorious compositions. It would be a real shame if people missed out on the opportunity to appreciate some of his finest contributions to classical Hollywood cinema.

*still courtesy of Universal Artists

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.