Watch Texas Carnival For Free

Great Film overall

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Absolutely amazing

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Director: CHARLES WALTERS. Screenplay: Dorothy Kingsley. Story: Dorothy Kingsley, George Wells. Photographed in Color by Technicolor by Robert Planck. Film editor: Adrienne Fazan. Art directors: Cedric Gibbons and William Ferrari. Set decorators: Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason. Costumes designed by Helen Rose. Hair styles: Sydney Guilaroff. Special effects: A. Arnold Gillespie, Warren Newcombe. Make-up: William Tuttle. Stunts: Gil Perkins. Technicolor color consultants: Henry Jaffa, James Gooch. Assistant director: Jack Greenwood. Sound supervisor: Douglas Shearer. Western Electric Sound Recording. Producer: Jack Cummings. Music director: David Rose. Choreography: Hermes Pan. Songs: "It's Dynamite!" (sung and danced by Ann Miller), "Carnie's Pitch" (Skelton), "Whoa, Emma!" (Keel), "Young Folks Should Get Married" (Keel), all by Harry Warren (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics); "Clap Your Hands" by David Rose (music) and Earl Brent (lyrics); "Deep in the Heart of Texas" by June Hershey and Don Swander. Copyright 10 September 1951 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at Loew's State: 12 October 1951. U.S. release: 5 October 1951. U.K. release: 8 December 1951. Australian release: 25 January 1952. 76 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Staff at a luxurious Texas dude ranch/hotel mistake a carnival pitch man for a multi-millionaire.COMMENT: I've said before that Red Skelton is most definitely not one of my favorite comedians. He tends to squeeze out and excessively belabor material that is both unfunny and threadbare to begin with. Until the climatic chuck-wagon race, that comment is true of Texas Carnival. True, there are two or three good moments along the way, but it's not until Red is actually astride the tearaway chuck-wagon that the fun really begins—and it's well worth waiting for! Fortunately, there are also a few compensations along the way, including peppy Ann Miller, an underused Esther Williams (who does swim a little in a double-exposed fantasy sequence in which she vamps Howard Keel), a belligerent Keenan Wynn (who is forced to stooge for Red in a boring episode with a shade and a shower) and a pistol-happy Tom Tully. It's also good to see Glenn Strange in a sizable role as the friendly villain of the piece (he milks at least two really good gags with Skelton) and I also enjoyed catching one or two glimpses of Paula Raymond. OTHER VIEWS: Here's the principal gag-line of Chaplin's "City Lights" riding the range in this brightly colored but rather empty musical. Despite its short running time, Texas Carnival was sold as an "A" picture, but it has enough traditional "B"-western features (including songs and the all-stops-out chase climax) to warrant watching. True, it's Skelton's picture — the other stars are sidelined - but the laugh quality of his material is mostly poor. Despite his inability to handle Skelton, director Charles Walters has tried to invest the movie with an occasional bit of razz and even style, but the end results are mostly rather mild. The new songs are not much help either, even though they were composed by Harry Warren (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics), both of whom have done far, far superior work with other collaborators elsewhere. As it turns out, the most exciting number in the movie is that old standard, "Deep in the Heart of Texas". All the same, the script's constant adulatory references to Texas become rather too, too obvious. Even Texans will probably find most of this picture disappointingly tiresome. - JHR writing as Charles Freeman,

This musical comedy stars Red Skelton as Cornie, who teams with the ever attractive Esther Williams as his partner Debbie, who work a dunk tank at a carnival...not successfully. Cornie comes to the aid of an oil baron Dan Sabinas(Keenan Wynn), who has had too much to drink and takes a cab to Mexico before giving his car keys to the carnival worker. When Cornie tries to return the car to Dan's hotel, he is mistaken for the tycoon. This is when the fun really begins. Howard Keel plays Dan's ranch foreman; Texas CARNIVAL now becomes a legitimate musical. (At some point you will think this could have been just as good as a straight comedy). Others in the cast: Ann Miller, Tom Tully, Hans Conried, Thurston Hall and Glenn Strange. One of the highlights is a water ballet sequence. Ms. Williams couldn't look any finer.

Penniless carnival barker Red Skelton and chorine-turned-dunking girl Esther Williams are mistaken for millionaires and are forced to enter a Chuck Wagon race to eradicate a gambling debt. Modest M-G-M comedy-musical filmed in Technicolor looks just as good as the studio's more-popular output--what was needed, however, was a screenplay with bigger laughs and stronger characterizations. Skelton juggles, sings, and performs some pleasing comedy shtick, but he's too polite here; director Charles Walters keeps Red reigned-in so much that a nutty drunk routine late in the movie seems out of place. Williams has a nifty fantasy number where she appears to pole-dance underwater (!), while Ann Miller has one great tap-dance sequence accompanied by a mad xylophone. Isolated moments of fun linked by the barest minimum of plot, though the wild slapstick finale nearly makes up for the picture's deficiencies. **1/2 from ****

This brash and often noisy Technicolor trifle is definitely not for those expecting to enjoy a series of Esther's more elaborate water ballets. She spends a minimal amount of time in the water in this one and there's only one trademark production number, a dream sequence in which she floats sinuously about in Howard Keel's darkened hotel room, trailing yards of diaphanous white veiling, that comes close to what her fans might have lined up at the box-office hoping to enjoy.Esther, however, looks wondrously healthy and pretty throughout, the very picture of an All-American Girl, acting with her usual pert insouciance. Howard gets to unleash his rich bass-baritone in two or three forgettable songs, though he certainly looks convincing as a lanky ranch foreman. Red Skelton contributes his usual shtick, at some tedious length here and there, and even manages to amuse today's audiences with a skillfully executed pratfall or two. Ann Miller, ever the most energetic in the cast, seems to come out on top in this pastiche, tossing off a couple of her patented leg-tossing, tippy-tapping dance amazements, choreographed by the reliable Hermes Pan.M-G-M touted this as 'Another Big MGM Musical' but it appears to have been rather thriftily produced, with some minimal location work that looks notably cobbled together, especially in a concluding and very extended chuck wagon race, which involves some dangerously risky stunt work, by the way.Keenan Wynn lends some very sour support, as a Texas millionaire, overly fond of his bourbon. Skelton also is supposed to imbibe a prodigious amount in one drawn-out sequence, and we're meant to find it riotously funny, something that may have been acceptable back in the early 1950s but which fails to amuse as easily today, with our greater awareness of the very deleterious effects of excessive alcohol intake.It's also amusing to note how very much inflation has devalued the American dollar in the more than half-century since this film was released. A multi-room hotel suite large enough to fill one of M-G-M's average soundstages is quoted as costing what would be the usual price in today's dollars for a single, modest hotel room in a smaller U.S. city. A doctor makes a house call, to tend a briefly ailing Ms. Williams (She's fainted from hunger, poor thing!), for a fee that wouldn't cover the charge for administering an aspirin anywhere in a U. S. health facility today. A beautiful Lincoln Cosmopolitan convertible is smashed into a tree (mercifully, off-camera) and the quoted estimated tariff for its repairs (supposedly including a ruined dashboard) is so laughably minuscule that the total wouldn't cover a six months' insurance premium assessed for an ultra-safe contemporary driver with no traffic citations on his/her record over many prior years of accident-free mileage. What price progress?!?