The Forest Rangers (1942)

Whoever thought the beautiful, sexy Susan Hayward would start her career playing a character named "Butch"? In The Forest Rangers, she's not the romantic lead. Paulette Goddard is the beautiful love interest to forest ranger Fred MacMurray, with masculine Susan Hayward waiting in the wings. This love triangle is amusing enough to justify renting this movie, so if you're as much a Susan Hayward fan as I am, I recommend watching it one afternoon for a good laugh.With tons of special effects combined with real footage of forest fires and controlled burns, The Forest Rangers is a pretty impressive movie for 1942. Stunt doubles are used and abused, and the blue-screen effect is very well edited for the time period. The plot is interesting and fast-paced, and there's both a surprise and a good laugh in the end. It's a little more light-hearted than you'd expect, but it's pretty cute. Plus there's a funny scene between Fred MacMurray and Eugene Pallette straight out of any classic comedy: Fred has been out all night with Paulette, Eugene's daughter, and neither man knows who the other is. So, while Eugene is laughing about Fred's conquest, he has no idea that the girl in question is his daughter!

I was a forest ranger for over 30 years, so I have a special affinity for this film professionally, but I've also loved old films for nearly my entire life, so I also love this as a glorious misfire.The cast and crew are sterling. George Marshall directed. Fred MacMurray, Paulette Goddard, Susan Hayward, Eugene Paulette, Regis Toomey and lots of the Paramount stock company such as Jimmy Conlin and Albert Dekker, wonderful photography, high production values, cooperation from USDA Forest Service; first use of a song that would become an ersatz standard, what could possibly go wrong?I think that it's horribly miscast, for starters. Paulette Goddard was at her most beautiful in 1941 when this was shot, but her character is so whiny and self centered that it's really difficult to see what the Ranger finds attractive about her. And if you think that Susan Hayward and her upper crust accent and clipped phrasing could possibly be a timber beast somewhere in the mountains, then you're delusional.Marshall's direction really confuses me. He was a great talent and made many wonderful films, but he apparently couldn't decide if this film was a melodrama, romance, spectacle, slapstick film or murder mystery. It tries to be all things, but doesn't work at any of them very well.Warning: Spoilers and plot points trickle out below: Still, it's fun to watch. The fire scenes are amazing; I've watched this repeatedly for over twenty years yet I'm still trying to figure out how they were staged. The locations are amazing, ranging from the Ranger Station at Big Basin State Park in the coast redwoods near Santa Cruz to what seems to be some pine forests in the Shasta Trinity NF, some 250 miles northeast, Ranger Fred has one heckuva lot of acreage to take care of.There's also a really bizarre sort of subplot involving a retired logger, "Jammer," who takes care of the rangers and the ranger station. To watch Jimmy Conlin essentially bitching off Paulette Goddard about her marrying Ranger Fred while cleaning up the living quarters, and to literally exclaim "What's he need a wife for when he's got me?" with a name like 'Jammer' is just way too weird to take seriously in the 1940s.Smoke jumpers were relatively new in 1941, and Paramount made sure to show this new firefighting technique off; indeed, it's central to the plot, but when Ranger Fred isn't jumping out of planes or preaching the virtues of sustained yield, he's too dense to be properly hit on by Susan Hayward and oblivious to his spoiled brat of a wife who is trying to take him out of the woods. Only extreme melodrama can save the day, and indeed, a murder-arson mystery is thrown in just to give the filmmakers something else entirely to work with.The film ends so abruptly that it reminds me of an old joke I used to hear about what you do when writing a short story and you run out of inspiration-- you just have everyone get run over by a truck. That's not what literally happens here, but it's just about as subtle. Bosley Crowther, in his NYT review, called the film "Technicolor Arson" which seems to sum it all up pretty well.I've not found anything definitive about its business, but suffice it to say that it was not one of Paramount's top grossers in 1942, and in its re-release in the mid-1950s, it was at the bottom of a double bill. Maybe on its first release it got lost in the confusion of the first months of WWII, but it really is in so many ways, a really stupid film, albeit a great deal of fun. I'm pretty sure that movie- goers in early 1942 had much more important things on their minds.

As likable as a good old fashioned log roll, this outdoor adventure yarn of human Smokey the Bears is fun from start to finish, featuring a cast to die for. Fred MacMurray is a forest ranger investigating a series of obvious arson related forest fires who married socialite childhood sweetheart Paulette Goddard in spite of the fact that his colleagues believes that he's going to get hitched to his tomboy boss "Butch" (Susan Hayward). The jilted Hayward isn't pleased at all, arranging for the three of them to spend the honeymoon night "bundling" (using body heat to keep warm outdoors) after a minor car mishap arranged by her. But Hayward shouldn't underestimate her big city rival, especially when the three of them do accidentally get caught on a long roll.Mixing comedy, action and romance, this is pure and simple fun. Eugene Palette, Regis Toomey, Lynne Overman and Albert Dekker are also caught up in the intrigue which results in a thrilling final where city slicker Goddard and tough country gal Hayward come to an "understanding". Their re-teaming after the same year's "Reap the Wild Wind" is a bit closer to Goddard's catfight with Rosalind Russell in "The Women".There's also an exciting look at how the log industry works, with Goddard getting in the way at some precarious moments. As for Hayward, her loveliness can't be hidden underneath all of her masculine duds not matter how "butch" she seems. Palette is very funny as Goddard's cranky father glad to be rid of her. The color photography makes this truly a vision, and a Frank Loesser song, "I've Got Spurs That Jingle, Jangle Jingle" is a simplistic delight.

Fred MacMurray is a forest ranger, obviously, and Susan Hayward is the woman he loves. Correction: she loves him, and he treats her like one of the boys. He later meets Paulette Goddard, and they get hitched, supplying the plot of rivalry between Susan and Paulette. Costarring Regis Toomey and Brian Donlevy, this movie contains a mixture of light comedy and soap opera-ish drama, making it a cross between the TV show "Dallas" and Carol Burnett's soap opera send-off, "Fresno" in the eighties (which I wish they would put on DVD.) And, the fires will knock you out and look like something out of "Backdraft." You literally can feel the heat, they're so real. I was very impressed with the fact they didn't cut corners in showing the real thing in an old movie like this. In fact, I was very impressed with everything for such a little unknown movie, which I think you will too.