Virginia City (1940)

Crappy film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Firstly, it should be pointed out, that many of the reviews here, contain definite spoilers, with no warning. Shame on them.Then, all of these movie review wannabes, who parrot words of Hopkins and Bogart being " miscast" are cute little homilies that serve no purpose, and are wholly incorrect. These studios were adept at all matters of film production, and they knew what they were doing. This cry of "miscast", makes people not want to watch a great movie. Bogart is great as the bandit, and is cast correctly. For goodness sake, it's not really a Mexican role, and so what if it was? There were many people who associated with Mexicans then, or had mixed ancestry. Anyway, he did fine. And Hopkins has one, not two love interests. But the story is brilliant, acting superior, and a very happy and rewarding resolution. Errol Flynn, is sheer genius here.

Rather dated by modern standards, with badly staged shootouts and obvious rear projection setups for when the stars are in close-up, this is still a fairly entertaining olde tyme western, thanks to a strong dash of Civil War intrigue, some (then) cutting edge work by legendary western stunt director Yakima Canutt and some truly magnificent desert scenery. Director Michael Curtiz was the model of an economical studio director and produced his usual smooth results. The movie looks good, moves efficiently and shows no evidence of flab or waste. Errol Flynn is likable as ever as a Union officer on the trail of a confederate gold shipment. Flynn was never long on acting chops, but he had a lot of amiability on screen and here he is at something close to his best. Randolph Scott is also very good as his opposite number, a stalwart Rebel captain with a plan to keep the bankrupt Confederacy in the war business. Unfortunately, the rest of the casting was a major weakness. Humphrey Bogart, a year before his star-making break in The Maltese Falcon, is here badly miscast as a Mexican bandit (I am not making this up) complete with cheesy moustache and even cheesier accent. And that's not the worst. Miriam Hopkins once again begs the question as to how she got to be a top-billed movie star. Ordinary looking and one- dimensionally earnest, she demonstrates no hint of that special uniqueness that ear-marks a movie star, and in her two rather embarrassing musical numbers fails to hint at a talent for either dancing or singing. If Judy Garland represents an 'A', and, let's say Betty Hutton gets a 'B', Hopkins would be hard pressed to crack a 'D-'. But if you can overlook the deficiencies of its leading actress, this is an efficient piece of old fashioned family entertainment of a sort not produced in a long time.

Could any two less likely major stars be chosen to carry a Hollywood oater? There's Errol Flynn, an Australian with an accent of sorts who made his name waving a sword at sea and shooting arrows in forests. There's Miriam Hopkins, one of the most sophisticated and slyest actresses Hollywood has ever seen, but whose career as a major star in major movies had declined since the late Thirties. Yet together with Randolph Scott and director Michael Curtiz, they turn Virginia City into a rouser, part full-blown action western and part patriotic soap opera. With the movie slightly more than two hours long, Curtiz crams in more set-ups than probably he should have, but even all those separate piece-parts look good. Kerry Bradford (Flynn) is a Union officer imprisoned in Libby Prison just outside of Richmond. Vance Irby (Randolph Scott) is a Confederate officer assigned to run the prison while he recuperates from war wounds. The war is not going well for the Confederates. Bradford and two pals break out just as Confederate spy Julia Hayne (Miriam Hopkins), based in Virginia City, Nevada, arrives for a meeting with old friend Irby. Confederate mine owners in Virginia City have accumulated enough gold for a major shipment to Richmond...$5 million in bullion that could change the war. With Jefferson Davis' approval, Irby is ordered to go to Virginia City and organize a wagon train to try to get the gold down to Texas and the Gulf coast, then by ship back to Richmond. But Union spies know the gold is being readied. Bradford, back in uniform, convinces his superiors to send him to Virginia City, locate the gold and stop the shipment. And who should be on the stagecoach taking Kerry and his two pals to Virginia City? Yes, Julia Hayne. And not just her. There's a man with a hairline mustache, a twitchy way, a false smile and a strangely uncertain Mexican accent. It's Humphrey Bogart, disguised as the renegade John Murrell, the leader of Murrell's Marauders, a group of hard-riding robbers and killers. The stage is set for action...hair-breadth escapes, run-away stage coaches, tense stand-offs, rousing songs at the Sazerac Saloon (where Julia is the headliner as a singer and dancer), a desperate wagon train running out of water and attacked in the desert by Humphrey Bogart, bullet extractions, beautiful desert scenery, a court martial and a cavalry charge to the rescue, not in that order. We even get a dignified Jefferson Davis, a jocular General George Meade and a merciful and wise Abraham Lincoln, who recites parts of his second inaugural address to a teary-eyed Julia. Errol Flynn does a bang-up job, but Miriam Hopkins and Humphrey Bogart are game but miscast. Hopkins is as unlikely an earnest Southern spy as she is a saloon singer, yet she's still highly watchable as both. She was born and raised in Georgia, but the softness of a high-bred Southern belle with something approximating a New England tease makes for an accent that's uniquely hers. Her lower choppers are charmingly irregular and she can handle a high kick with ease. Hopkins was so mischievous and sly an actress that it must have been hard to find the right movies for her. That she took Hollywood less than seriously probably didn't help. For her best work, you'll need to watch Trouble in Paradise, The Smiling Lieutenant and Design for Living. At 47 she was memorable as Aunt Livinia in The Heiress. As for Bogart, after this movie he probably counted his blessings that in the following year he broke through with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. If Bogart hadn't scored these two, it's just likely he would have been stuck for the rest of his life competing for character parts with J. Carroll Naish. Thank goodness we have Randolph Scott to provide the movie's steadfastness and old- fashioned honor. He may be playing a reb, he may be up against Errol Flynn as a hero and a suitor, but Scott knows how to hold his own in these kinds of pictures. On balance, Virginia City is easy to watch, thanks to Scott and Flynn. Miriam Hopkins makes for a unique kind of heroine and even Humphrey Bogart's secondary villain is interesting in a ludicrous sort of way.

At the end of Michael Curtiz's enormously successful Dodge City in 1939, Olivia DeHavilland decides she's married a professional lawman after all so Guinn Williams ends the film with a resounding, 'Virginia City here we come' as Errol Flynn will now take the job offer of marshal.Too bad that they didn't make a sequel with those same characters. A year later when Virginia City was made it was a fanciful Civil War out west tale about a Confederate scheme at the last minute to smuggle several millions in gold bullion into the South for supplies to keep the war going. And what happens in the end strains credulity to say the least.Carried over from the cast of Dodge City are Errol Flynn, Guinn Williams, Alan Hale, and Ward Bond. Olivia DeHavilland chose not to make the trip. At that point in her career she was fighting with Jack Warner to not keep playing crinolined heroines. So Miriam Hopkins was the leading lady here.Other reviewers have said how lousy Miriam Hopkins was as a singing saloon chanteuse. In fairness to Miriam I have to point out that she's a Confederate spy singing a Union song, The Battle Cry of Freedom with about as much enthusiasm as she can muster. And she's also in that establishment the Sazerac saloon, not being paid for her voice.Errol Flynn, a former prisoner at the Confederacy's Libby Prison, after an escape gets an assignment to check out rumors that Southern sympathizing mine owners are going to smuggle their find into the Confederacy. At the same time the former commandant of Libby, Randolph Scott, gets an assignment to bring the gold out.Of course when they meet at the Sazerac all pretense to undercover is out the window. But Scott's got an ace up his sleeve in Miriam Hopkins who Flynn is kind of sweet on. She leads Errol astray and into the Confederate hands. Talk about true life casting, Errol being led astray by his hormones.There's a third player in this game and that's Humphrey Bogart who plays the Mexican bandit leader Murrell with an accent like the Frito Bandito's. Bogey was also fighting for some better roles and in fact he got one the same year in High Sierra that would turn his career around. What possessed Jack Warner to cast him in this role, God only knows. Bogey's looks dumb in this part and he knows it. Why couldn't they just get someone like Gilbert Roland for the part?There's quite a shootout in the desert over the gold. What happens to it is rather unbelievable, let's just say that Errol Flynn took a great deal upon himself and he was quite the lucky fellow to get the fate he got. Virginia City is entertaining enough in a B western sort of way. But if I had three film icons like Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott, and Humphrey Bogart in my film, I'd sure have looked for a better property, pardner.