his own breed
by Douglas Messerli
Earl Baldwin, Monty Banks, and Arthur Caesar
(screenplay, based on the 1903 play by Richard Carle and the 1935 play by
George S. Kaufman), Ray Enright (director) The Tenderfoot / 1932
What’s true for almost all of the coded queer
films from Hollywood’s golden era of filmmaking from 1930-1960 is that it takes
a clued-in eye sometimes to separate the heterosexual surface from the
purposely hidden subtext—and admittedly one wonders at times whether it’s worth
all the bother, particularly in the case of a rather mediocre work such as the
Joe E. Brown vehicle The Tenderfoot of 1932, directed by Ray Enright,
whose 73-some films represent some of the most inane productions of the studio
system.
I
suspect if it weren’t for a few George S. Kaufman lines and plot intrigues from
his The Butter and Egg Man that made their way into this work and the
four others based on his and Richard Carle’s earlier versions of the story, we
wouldn’t even remember The Tenderfoot. But then Brown’s theatrically
athletic face (Brown might be said to be totally athletic: he began his life as
a viable baseball player recruited for the New York Yankees and,
earlier, as a circus tumbler) is sometimes worth watching, and to catch a
glimpse of the young Ginger Rogers playing a major role is perhaps of
significant interest.
The
plot of Enright’s film is of concern only because it might be described as a
kind of a prelude to Mel Brooks’ 1967 film and Susan Stroman’s 2005 musical
version of The Producers, only in this case the Nazi musical is simply a
badly conceived melodrama in which Tenderfoot producers Lew Cody (Joe
Lehman) and McClure (Robert Grieg) convince the newly arrived Texas
cattle-roper Calvin Jones (Joe E. Brown) to invest 49% ($20,000).
(Nevertheless, there is a sour anti-Semitic joke about “the lost tribe” as well
as Brown’s wisecrack that reading the menu of the Jewish delicatessen is
incomprehensible.)
And, yes, the play which Cody and McClure are certain will be a
sure-fire flop, as in The Producers turns into a hit after Calvin buys
out the rest of the shares and—since he no longer can afford new
costumes—dresses his small town melodramatic thespians in Shakespearian
vestments which convince the audience, just as does Springtime for Hitler,
that the dreadful work must surely be a satire.
There’s not much else to The Tenderfoot’s plot except that Calvin
falls in love with Cody and McClue’s secretary, Ruth Watson (Ginger Rogers) and
when he makes a fortune from his producing activities he is threatened by the
mafia; thank heaven Calvin’s an award-winning shooter and carries two loaded
pistols with him wherever he goes and that he can successfully lasso even a New
York taxi!
I
now realize if there wasn’t a minor gay subtext there wouldn’t be much else to
even talk about in the movie. And the script really wants its audience to
perceive what it pretends to suppress by herding Calvin into the delicatessen
where he meets the producers through the sudden appearance of eight cowboys
dressed in fleecy chaps filing into the shop. The Texan hick shouts out: “You
can stop right here I see some of my own breed over there across the canyon,”
signaling that he’s found his own kind—a greeting he might soon regret given
that when he yells out “Yippee!” the gay chorus boys, all looking a great deal
like the queer cowboy in Ralph Cedar’s The Soilers (1923), in unison
holler back with a flap of the wrists “Whoo Hoo!” (in those days the standard coded gay cry). “They
may be cowboys,” Calvin muses, “but they ain’t from Texas.”
But then, as we all know, he ain’t in Texas anymore! And even from the
very first frame we recognize that the actor Joe. E. Brown, born and raised
near Toledo, Ohio, is dressed in drag with his string tie and ten-gallon hat
that, when his character is transformed into a producer, will dress up in drag
again in city-slicker duds, in which Calvin always looks miserable as he struts
about in stiff-legged strides through the city environs.
Even if the script makes it clear that Calvin is a heterosexual stricken
with love for Ruth, she appears to also be acting in her sexual encouragement
just to keep him on the ranch, so to speak.
After she makes it clear that she has just been pretending and declares
that he’s been an utter idiot to believe in Cody’s and McClure’s schemes, the
almost mindless Calvin buys out the schemers’ remaining shares.
That’s when the new “butter and egg man” in the form of the hotel party
waiter comes in. To convince him to invest the needed money, Calvin tells the
plot of the old-fashioned melodrama all over again, almost literally pawing the
poor would-be producer as he describes the various amatory actions of the poor
farmer’s daughter who falls in love with an evil city-slicker and the
good-hearted local postman who genuinely loves her. It’s one of the best scenes
in the film as Brown playing Calvin puts his arm around the waiter’s shoulder,
positions his rubber face smack in front of his prospective investor’s eyes,
and drops to floor to declare the character’s love. I could have sworn that
Calvin was about to kiss the man, but even in a pre-code flick that might have
been going a bit too far. We certainly do come to comprehend, however, just how
close the attempts to convince a man to surrender his money to a Broadway play
is to courting a lover. If you recall, that’s how Zero Mostel got in trouble in
The Producers as well.
Throughout the film, in fact, the overly-excited subordinate partner
tosses out one-liners and malapropisms. After swallowing the last remnants of a
banana, Calvin queries in Mae West fashion: “If an apple a day, keeps a doctor
away—what'll a banana do?” And later, greeting the bellboys, he shouts out
“Ejaculations!”
This is, of course, a Hollywood movie and, accordingly, we see no more
of the “bride” who has been willing to marry his life-savings to this fellow
dreamer. Calvin naturally returns to the Lone Star state with Ruth, at film’s
end the mother of triplets. But don’t worry, even if they look a bit like
Calvin they’re not really the product of his sperm but are cinematically
created homunculi, cloned evidently from fan photos.
Although this film might have convinced any ordinary producer that it
would surely prove to be a flop, Brian Foy, the eldest son of the vaudeville
troupe “Eddie Foy and the Seven Little Foys” must have recognized it as perfect
addition to the growing list of what would eventually become 241 films that he
produced, all grade B pictures. Among Hollywood insiders he was known as “The
keeper of the B’s.”
Los Angeles, January 29, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January
2021
