Opinion
Several commentators on Montana Moon have focused on the inadequacy of its sound recording. Richard Barrios, for example, points out to “Joan Crawford singing on horseback zillions of feet away from the camera sounding just as loud as the cowboy chorus warbling in the foreground. This may, in part, be attributable to shooting many sequences away from the soundstage. The number cited by Barrios, ‘Montana Moon,’ was filmed on location, enabling the distance he mentions. The staging may have been decided weeks after the recording for playback was made, resulting in the dissonance of sound and image.
Montana Moon gets little love from the few writers on early musicals. Edwin M Bradley goes so far as to claim that Joan Crawford “is not pleasingly photographed by the usually reliable William Daniels,” which is palpably untrue.
For my part, while the plot of Montana Moon is clearly nonsensical, I find it far more watchable than its immediate Metro musical predecessor, Lord Byron of Broadway. It is well-photographed (whatever Bradley says) and better-acted than many films of the period. And if Johnny Mack Brown is no great leading man, he is John Barrymore compared to Charles Kaley.
The songs provided by Stothart-Grey and Freed-Brown are mediocre but inoffensive, and in a couple of cases difficult to attribute. Crawford, as always, does her best with the talent she has, but much of the singing is left to supporting player Cliff Edwards, the world’s most-unlikely cowboy until you look at Benny Rubin (check out Rubin in the closing shot, grinning away as if he lived on horseback).
Montana Moon, in addition to William Daniels, had some classy people working offscreen. Director Mal St Clair was past his best, but he and editor Carl Pierson pace the picture quite well, while costumes were provided by Adrian.
Often cited as the first Singing Cowboy film, Montana Moon does not deserve a high reputation, but it does merit a better one than it has.
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