Word: ebsen
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Jowls & Shanks. Pa is nicely played by Buddy Ebsen, 54, the ex-hoofer who last scored on TV as George Russell, constant companion of Davy Crockett. Pa has an oafishly agreeable young cousin named Jethro, who is a l'il weak-minded and has spent a dozen years in the fifth grade at Oxford. Oxford where? No one wonders except the thick-witted Hollywood types who want to know if Jethro went to Eton as a boy. "If I know Jethro, he went to eatin' when he was a baby," says Pa. Jethro is played by Max Baer...
...maché heroes of most Hollywood westerns, Davy Crockett is filled with engaging human imperfections : he loses his first hand-to-hand battle with the Indian chief, Red Stick, and only succeeds in overcoming villainous Mike Mazurki by biting his opponent's thumb. There are some stereotypes-Buddy Ebsen has the familiar role of the trusty pal, and Hans Conreid plays a cowardly gambler with synthetic W. C. Fields flourishes. But, all in all, Davy makes his giant-sized legend come as truly alive as that of Mike Fink, the river boatman, or Paul Bunyan, the peerless woodsman...
Thanks to Howard Bay's sets, it never loses its looks. Jan Clayton (Carousel) proves a winning Magnolia, Colette Lyons an agreeable Ellie, Buddy Ebsen a live dancing personality and Ralph Dumke a jovial Captain Andy. And handsome Carol Bruce, tackling the Bill that made the late Helen Morgan famous, brought down the opening-night house...
...then-some includes the shapeliest girls, the scantiest clothes available. These, together with plenty of steam-room antics and off-color dialogue, turn Hopwood's tale of a professor (Buddy Ebsen) who is completely unnerved at the sight of exposed female flesh into the likes of a burlesque show. Good Night Ladies, as Chicago Tribune Critic Cecil Smith put it, satisfied "every taste except good taste...
Best that can be said for Parachute's hackneyed story of how the Army made parachutists out of a feuding hillbilly (Buddy Ebsen), a colonel's son who thought himself yellow (Edmond O'Brien) and an amorous football hero (Robert Preston) is that the picture survives the plot's monkeyshines. Better left unmentioned is RKO's error in making its football chutist an All-American from Harvard, a university which has not turned out a bona fide All-American in nine years...