Warner Brothers seem to have made a concerted attempt to groom Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan as their studio's version of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, with Morgan as the Bing-like handsome affable crooner and Carson as the Bob-like egotistical braggart. Although Carson and Morgan display real chemistry together, they simply aren't in Hope and Crosby's league. (Jack Carson's facial moles might be part of the problem.) Typically, Warners musicals lacked the production values of Paramount's splashy 'Road' films -- I can't recall a single truly great Warners musical, except for 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' (plus some later Warners adaptations of musicals that originated on Broadway) -- and the scripts and songs of the Carson/Morgan films are usually far inferior to Hope's and Crosby's material.
'Two Guys from Texas' is likely the best of the Carson/Morgan teamings, and it's a delightful musical comedy ... profiting from an elaborate animation sequence that seems inspired by the animation in MGM's 'Anchors Aweigh'. Dennis and Jack play a couple of vaudevillains who are motoring through Texas. Dennis sings a tune about tumbleweeds in front of some bad rear-projection. They run afoul of some hold-up men and land up at a dude ranch where they attract the attention of two young ladies: pretty Dorothy Malone (very sexy in a Dorothy Lamour wig), who fancies handsome Dennis, and the rather less pretty Penny Edwards, who fancies Jack. Apparently unaware of his facial moles, Jack wonders why he isn't as successful with the fair sex as Dennis, and this leads him to consult a local doctor (splendidly played by veteran character actor Fred Clark). The wind-up gag involving Clark's character is hilarious.
Jack Carson's character is lumbered with a ridiculous handicap -- he's afraid of animals: ALL animals -- and some unfortunate dialogue, even telling the doctor that sometimes he wishes he was a girl. Hmm...
The script is largely by I.A.L. Diamond (best known for his Billy Wilder collaborations) and Allen Boretz of 'Room Service' fame. I laughed at one very clever dialogue scene on a cutaway set. Carson and Morgan have checked into the dude ranch and are sharing one room, while the two women are in the room next door over with a partition between. The men are conversing in one room while the women are talking in the other, but the two conversations interleave so that the dialogue takes on an entirely new meaning. Ingenious and hilarious! Less impressive is the torch song "Hankerin'".
The best song here (by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne) is a comic duet for the two men, 'I Wanna Be a Cowboy in the Movies', but the song that gets the most attention is Morgan's romantic ballad 'Ev'ry Day I Love You Just a Little Bit More'. This is reprised in the animation sequence, done in standard Warners toon style by Fritz Freleng of the Termite Terrace gang. We see a cartoon version of Dennis Morgan crooning to some swooning she-sheep in bobby socks and saddle shoes, while a cartoon version of Jack Carson gets some advice on sexual politics from Bugs Bunny before he's chased by a large ugly Red Indian woman. This is a reprise of an unfunny running gag from the live-action scenes, in which Carson is pursued by Lilly Christine as the unattractive Red Indian who speaks Spanish. ('Oye, muy bonita!') For some reason, the cartoon versions of Morgan and Carson in this sequence don't look nearly as good as the cartoon versions of other showbiz figures in 'What's Up, Doc?' and other Warners toons.
'Two Guys from Texas' is deftly directed by David Butler, formerly a handsome silent-screen actor who found his true metier behind the camera, but whose directorial career is woefully underrated. I'll rate this very enjoyable froth 8 out of 10. I wish that the other Carson/Morgan teamings were nearly as good as this one.
