Virginia City

Guinn Williams, Alan Hale Sr., and Errol Flynn

Michael Curtiz's Virginia City is an amiable enough Errol Flynn vehicle, but it is also the least interesting Flynn/Curtiz collaboration Warner Brothers released in 1940, the others being Santa Fe Trail and The Sea Hawk. Flynn is a Yankee Captain during the Civil War who we first view attempting to break out of the infamous Libby prison in Richmond. The commandant of that prison is Randolph Scott who is improbably roped into a plot, by dancehall gal/spy Mildred Hopkins, to move five million dollars in gold from the titular town east in order to prop up a tottering Confederacy. After busting out of the hoosegow, Flynn is tabbed to thwart the rebel plan. A troupe of banditos, headed by a mustachioed Humphrey Bogart, lurks on the periphery threatening mischief at every step.

I'm not referring to the characters in this picture because they hardly exist. The flick has a cobbled together feel with various writers contributing different elements to the formulaic stew. There is a pinch of Gone With The Wind and more than a dollop of Stagecoach. Flynn gets to display his good natured dash, but other familiar elements lack brio. Guinn Williams and Alan Hale are along to provide comic relief as Flynn's cohorts, but the material they are given is feeble. Curtiz's gifts did not include comic raffishness. His exterior scenes lack the dynamism and thematic integration employed by Walsh and Ford, though the scenic vistas, mostly in Arizona, are gorgeous. The most memorable sequences are interior: the Sazerac dancehall where Ms. Hopkins plies her trades and the opening sequences inside and below Libby prison.

Humphrey Bogart

The weakest and most embarrassing element of the film is Bogart's performance as a Mexican bad man. It is among the more ludicrous miscastings in Hollywood history, right up there with Bogart's turn as a vampire in The Return of Doctor X, but it belies the fact that Bogie had not reached the status of an A player, yet. It did not have to be since Bogart was playing a real figure, the outlaw John Murrell, who was, in fact, not a Mexican. Of course, the real Murell died in 1844, but Virginia City is not encumbered by historic fact. I rolled my eyes when a Virginia City town crier announces the simultaneous fall of Southern strongholds Vicksburg and Atlanta; events that were separated by some fourteen months. What is more objectionable than the picture's slipshod treatment of history is its even-handedness to the Union and Rebel cause; a sop to the Southern box-office. Flynn and Scott are both honorable dudes who are just staying true to their cause. Slavery is unmentioned. The ulterior motive for this is that, two years before Pearl Harbor, Hollywood wanted to play down partisan and regional divisions in the US to cement the unity needed to combat the Axis menace.

There are some things I like about the flick. Hopkins and Scott were both Southerners and their accents are nicely relaxed. Compare them to Ward Bond who appears as a Confederate soldier early on. Bond's efforts aren't bad, but pales besides the real things. The songs Hopkins is saddled with are weak, even Dietrich would have flailed with them, but she is a trouper. I kind of like Flynn putting the moves on an older woman for once instead of jailbait like Olivia de Havilland, as was his wont in his surreal life.