a5c7b9f00b During the American Civil War, Captain Kerry Bradford escapes from a notorious confederate prison. He and two of his men are sent to Virginia City where Confederate sympathizers are prepared to donate $5 million dollars to the cause of Southern independence. The war is going badly for the Confederacy and money may tip the war in their favor. On the stagecoach to Virginia City, Bradford meets and falls in love with Julia Hayne not realizing that she is one of the conspirators. When he gets to Virginia City, he also runs into Confederate Captain Vance Irby who has been sent to collect and safely deliver the gold. Irby manages to get out of the city but the Union cavalry is in hot pursue. When Bradfoed catches up with them, he not only has to fight Irby but also John Murrell, a bandit who has his own plans for the gold. He also Union officer Kerry Bradford escapes from Confederate Prison and is set to Virginia City in Nevada. Once there he finds that the former commander of his prison Vance Irby is planning to send $5 million in gold to save the Confederacy. VIRGINIA CITY, the "non-sequel" to Errol Flynn's big 1939 hit, DODGE CITY, gives the impression that the Warner Brothers were suffering from a shortage of good Western scripts in 1940. The film 'borrows' much of Max Steiner's DODGE CITY musical score, reunites Flynn with DODGE CITY costars (and friends) Alan Hale and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams (playing virtually the same characters, with different names), and attempts the visual 'sweep' of DODGE CITY, in black and white, with a smaller budget. What is most memorable about the film, however, are two truly offbeat casting choices; Humphrey Bogart as a half-breed Mexican bandit, and tone-deaf Miriam Hopkins as a saloon singer. Bogart did NOT want to do the film (he felt himself miscast in westerns), but faced suspension if he didn't 'show up' for work, and his unconvincing Mexican accent and forced performance give clear evidence to his unhappiness with the role. Hopkins, whose reputation had been established in pre-Production Code sex comedies and dramas of the early thirties, was, at 38, already past her prime, and unbelievable as a love interest for either Flynn, or Randolph Scott. As a 'sexy' chanteuse, her singing is so incredibly bad that it must be heard to be believed!<br/><br/>The plot, of an undercover Union captain (Flynn) attempting to wrest a shipment of southern gold from a wagon train headed by the Confederate colonel (Scott) who had run the prison camp he'd previously escaped from, gets bogged down in subplots, and, in trying to appease viewers from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, makes everyone so noble that you wonder why there was a Civil War! Certainly, in Randolph Scott's case, the role wasn't much of a stretch, and would be one he would repeat frequently, with minor variations, for the next twenty years. Tasmanian Flynn, however, appears more comfortable in the Western genre than he had in DODGE CITY, and, after the on and off-screen battling with Bette Davis in his previous film, THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, it must have felt like a vacation (even with hated director Michael Curtiz helming the project!)<br/><br/>VIRGINIA CITY is, ultimately, a 'B' movie with an 'A'-list cast and crew, and while the end result isn't terrible, it isn't a film that either Flynn or Bogart would list as among their best efforts. Humphrey Bogart clearly did not want to be in this film, and be forced to play a part-Mexican or he would have been suspended. Believe me , he made the wrong choice! Presumably, after the success of "Dodge City", Warners tried a follow-up with Errol Flynn and his usual list of buddies, like Alan Hale, Guinn (Big Boy) Williams, Frank Mc Hugh and the ever-present John Litel, but they made the huge mistake of trying to present Miriam Hopkins as a love interest for Flynn v. Randolph Scott, and as a singer to really make things bad, because she proved one thing, and that is she cannot sing. The story was not too bad, but with Bogie clearly miscast also, it turned out to be a poor Western that was overlong, and on a low budget, but in fairness, color would not have helped.
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