Watch Callaway Went Thataway For Free

Powerful

Overrated and overhyped

not horrible nor great

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Producers: Norman Panama, Melvin Frank.Copyright 8 November 1951 by Loew's Inc. An MGM picture. New York opening at Loew's State: 5 December 1951. U.S. release: 18 December 1951. U.K. release: 21 June 1952. Australian release: 21 March 1952. 81 minutes. U.K. release title: The Star Said No. SYNOPSIS: When his corny old westerns prove a tremendous hit on television, a former cowboy star is lured back to Hollywood.PRINCIPAL MIRACLE: Keel plays two roles, and even fights himself, throwing the first punch by the ingenious use of a traveling matte. The rest of the fight is cleverly carried on by doubles, aided by fast cutting. A split screen is used for the initial confrontation.COMMENT: This gentle satire on TV and Hollywood would be a lot more dramatic if the punches were less lightweight and a whole lot funnier! And if Panama and Frank allowed the MacMurray character to be more cynical and less likable. True, he does have his share of neat put-downs and there are some clever visual gags. More guest appearances would have helped too. However, production values are MGM fulsome all the same. The principal players do wonders with their material and no-one will come away from Callaway feeling that he's wasted his time. A little short-changed maybe, but Callaway is still sufficiently amusing and entertaining to rate at least seven stars out of ten.

OK, I may be a little late to the party -- Howard Keel had a long, proud and successful career as a theater and movie star. But he was amazing in the dual roles of good guy Stretch Barnes and bad guy Smoky Calloway. Even though the two characters dressed in identical outfits through most of the movie, Keel's acting craft made it early to recognize whether you were seeing Stretch or Smoky. I actually spend a few minutes wondering whether it was two different lookalike actors, and had to check into IMDb to confirm that it was the same guy.The film itself was a clever take on the television Westerns that were popular when I was a boy. Fred MacMurray very nicely plays the role of a lovable on the outside, sleaze ball on the inside theatrical agent. Dorothy McGuire played the opposite as his partner -- reluctantly sleazy on the outside, heart of gold on the inside. Others include old standby Jesse White, and watch for Stan Freeberg as the nerd who works with MacMurray and McGuire.But really, Howard Keel was the star, and should have gotten top billing. Overall, the film was a very pleasant way to spend an hour-and-a-half or so.

There's a delightful dual role for HOWARD KEEL as a has-been cowboy star who has vanished when his old pictures are shown on TV--and FRED MacMURRAY and DOROTHY McGUIRE are desperate to lure him back so they can make more dough off all the cowboy merchandise he inspires. This was at a time when early TV was showing mainly the old Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers films for the kiddies.Persuaded to come back east and take on Callaway's role, Keel finds himself in a lot of funny situations once he takes on the assignment of playing the cowboy star. Later in the film, when the real Callaway is being groomed for a comeback, Keel's performance in the dual role is really impressive. There's never any mistake about which character he's impersonating, thanks to a subtle difference in nuances, looks and expressions.DOROTHY McGUIRE gets the glossy MGM treatment for her close-ups and looks wonderful as the sweet woman who develops an interest in the cowboy "Stretch" who's doing the Callaway impersonation. FRED MacMURRAY gets every grain of humor out of the role of the fast-talking agent with money on his mind. It's an enjoyable romp for all three stars with some guest appearances by folks like Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable and Esther Williams.Summing up: Pure fluff, but pleasant enough. The trick photography is abetted by the use of stunt doubles for the final fight scene between Keel and Keel.

Consider the time this film came out. It is one of the first feature films about the cinema's new rival, television. More specifically it is based on the renaissance of Hopalong Cassidy as an early television star.This film takes me back to when I was a lad in the early days of television when there was a need for programming. The first films that were shown on early television were grade B product from the studios which were not about to be re-released for the big screen. And of course those B westerns were in plentiful supply. In fact I have a theory that John Wayne's rapid rise to number one at the box office may have been in large part to the showing of his pre-Stagecoach westerns giving him valuable publicity for the A product he was currently working on.But the guy who had the biggest benefit was William Boyd who made his last Hopalong Cassidy picture in 1948. He had scraped together every bit of cash he could to buy all the rights to the Hopalong Cassidy films and character from producer Harry Sherman and author Clarence Mulford. So when those Cassidy films became a big hit on early television Boyd's career revived and he became a tycoon with all the Hoppy merchandise. And the craze was big, the film accurately depicts the merchandising bonanza that Hoppy was in real life and Smokey Callaway in this film.Like the Cassidy films in real life, the old films of B picture western star Smokey Callaway become a big hit on TV. They'd like to make more of them, but where's Smokey. TV programmers Fred MacMurray and Dorothy McGuire would sure like to find him. Smokey's just dropped off the planet. MacMurray and McGuire dispatch former agent Jesse White to locate Callaway who was quite a boozer back in the day and nothing like his screen image.In the meantime they locate a cowboy from Colorado who is a Callaway doppelganger. Howard Keel plays both parts and plays them well. The two scheming TV programmers hire Keel on to impersonate his lookalike. But they get quite a bit more than they bargain for.Callaway Went Thataway is an enjoyable film about a forgotten era in our social history. Cowboys don't have quite the image they once did in America and I'm not sure how today's audience relates to a film about early television which we pretty much take for granted. Still it's a piece of nostalgia for me.