Silver Queen (1942)

That was an excellent one.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

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.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Costume, business oriented westerns have plenty of drama already attached, and with a great cast, a potentially explosive set-up and a handsome look, this is plot-wise missing the elements to make it memorable. Priscilla Lane plays the daughter of a wealthy mine owner who loses everything in the depression and leaves Lane penniless and in debt when he dies. But as fast as she loses everything, she gains it back, paying off creditors and ending up with a tidy profit. Two suitors (George Brent and Bruce Cabot) vie for her hand, and it's up to her to discover the truth about each of them to decide whom she'll fall fully in love with.Too many minor details convolute the story in forgetting about the major ones, and as enjoyable as this is for the period color, the stars and the fact that a strong woman is presented, it's a sullen disappointment. Eugene Palette is fine as Lane's father, destroyed by the loss of his fortune, and Janet Beecher adds authoritative matriarchy as Cabot's powerful mother. I figured out right away whom Lane would end up with, which destroys any elements of surprise that this film might have had. Still, with handsome period detail and nice photography and a few intense action sequences, this is worth looking for.

Silver Queen casts sweet young Priscilla Lane in a role that probably should have been done by someone like Barbara Stanwyck. She plays a New York society girl who has to use her gambling wiles to pay back a debt that father Eugene Palette incurred before he died. What was an avocation to her becomes a profession.The debt that Palette incurred is as a result of a high stakes poker game where he lost the root of the family fortune, a Nevada silver mine. Palette lost it to George Brent a professional gambler, but a cavalier if there ever was one. He turns the deed of the mine over to society swell Bruce Cabot who has been engaged to Lane, perennially it would seem.But Cabot is one society rat who keeps the mine for himself. In the end the showdown comes between Brent and Cabot. Guess who wins?Though Silver Queen is a western as categorized, very little time is spent on the lone prairie, most of the film takes place in New York and San Francisco of the 1870s. That showdown climax is abrupt and rather clumsily staged.But Silver Queen's biggest problem is Priscilla Lane. Barbara Stanwyck who played tough and determined women could have carried this part off with a fraction of her talent. Sweet girl next door Priscilla Lane just was not convincing in the part.The film received Oscar nominations for Musical Scoring and black and white Art Direction. But that only serves to inflate an essentially B picture.

George Brent was a fine actor and I always liked Bruce Cabot as a heavy--so why is "Silver Queen" such a dull and unlikable film?! After all, it had a lot of money behind it--it was made by one of the top studios, Warner Brothers. But somehow, the film never seemed interesting and suffered from one HUGE problem problem--and quite a few small ones.The film begins around 1870. There's a huge charity party for the mega-rich and folks just toss around money like it grows on trees. The biggest spender that night is the ultra-cool professional gambler, James Kincaid (Brent). He immediately catches the eye of Coralie Adams (Priscilla Lane) and you know that according to formula by the end of the film the two will be wed. That's THE big problem, as one small unsaid conversation between the two could have easily resulted in their marrying and none of the problems that occur later. I HATE films where it all hinges on one unsaid thing--and in this case, James gives a silver mine to Coralie as a wedding present but never bothers to tell her!! Later, after YEARS have passed, he realizes she never married her no-good fiancé (Cabot) and he basically stole the mine! Why didn't he just ask her how the mine was doing? Why didn't he wonder why she never thanked him? Why did he give the mine to the fiancé to hold and not directly to her?! Frankly, I wish James had just handed the deed to Coralie and kept me from wasting my time--because what occurs between this and the end of the film is dreadfully dull and tough to believe. What else is tough to believe--that Coralie would become a top professional gambler. Priscilla Lane played very sweet ladies in film--SWEET LADIES. She was NOT the least bit convincing in a role that should have been given to an actress with more edge to her personality. Overall, the film is sluggish and rarely interesting. And, you'd think that such a prestige film would have been better.

Harry "Pop" Sherman spent most of his career producing superior B westerns and was best known for creating and running for several years the Hopalong Cassidy franchise. With this movie he made a bid for the big time and was rewarded with a couple of Oscar nominations, but the total effect, looked at from seventy years later, is an entertaining picture that is, nonetheless, a high-class B picture.This movie features several Warner Brothers people, both in front of and behind the camera, all trying for their big break, but once you get past the charity party sequence, there is little energy in the performances. Perhaps that is why the camera keeps moving constantly.