The Tenderfoot

With large confidence and an even larger hat, cattleman Calvin Jones (rubber-faced comic Joe E.Brown) rolls along the lighted cow path of Broadway. He has $20,000 to invest in a show, intending to skedaddle back to Texas with his profits. Faster than you can say flopperoo, the producers of the show Calvin bankrolls button it up and keep the dough. Now add mobsters eager to extort some cash and romance with a perky secretary (Ginger Rogers), and it's clear Calvin's got some wrangling to do before he's back in those wide-open spaces. George S. Kaufman's fish-out-of-water stage farce "The Butter and Egg Man" (Richard Carle shares an on-screen story credit) hits town as The Tenderfoot. Yeeee-haw, Manhattan!

George S. Kaufman's sturdy stage comedy THE BUTTER AND EGG MAN was the inspiration for no fewer than four Warner Bros. talkie versions. The first of these was THE TENDERFOOT, starring Joe E. Brown as a wealthy but naive cowboy alone in the Big Apple. The producers of a down-and-out musical revue hope to convince Brown to put his money in their show, sending out cute chorine Ginger Rogers as the "convincer." After having his heart broken a few times and tangling with gangsters, Joe comes through and the show goes on. Warners followed THE TENDERFOOT with a 1937 musicalization of BUTTER AND EGG MAN, DANCE CHARLIE DANCE; this in turn was remade as AN ANGEL FROM TEXAS in 1942. The final variation on this theme (so far!) was THREE SAILORS AND A GIRL (53).