In Old Arizona
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Tom Barry from a story by O. Henry
1928/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental
[last lines] The Cisco Kid: Her flirting days are over. And she’s ready to settle down.
The plot is corny and the acting is over-the-top. But these things only added to the charm for me.
The Cisco Kid (Warner Baxter) is a stagecoach robber who steals only from companies not from passengers. He’s an affable sort of Robin Hood who dotes on his girlfriend Tonia Maria (Dorothy Burgess), unaware of her serial infidelities.
Sergeant Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe) is on his trail. He easily convinces Tonia to help bring her man in by promising her a share of the reward money. Will the two be successful?
Baxter and Burgess take their characters way over-the-top, using every Latinex stereotype in the book, and Lowe is not far behind. Despite, or maybe because of, this I found the film thoroughly entertaining. It could not have been made post-Code for a couple of reasons.
Warner Baxter won the Oscar for Best Actor. The film was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing and Best Cinematography.
I hadn’t really thought of Warner Baxter as a handsome man until I saw this tribute.
