Adapted from O. Henry's The Caballero's Way, In Old Arizona follows the exploits (well, one exploit) of Conrado Sebastian Rodrigo Don Juan Chicuello (Warner Baxter), alias The Cisco Kid, gentleman bandit who never robs individuals, but merrily steals at gunpoint the Wells Fargo box off the noon stage. Cavalry Sgt. Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe) is assigned to capture him, but he's something of a chump, and at a chance meeting with The Cisco Kid at a barbershop Dunn fails to recognize him.

Meanwhile, The Cisco Kid's girl, Tonia Maria (Dorothy Burgess), is revealed as a greedy tramp. Nearly caught fooling around with one man, upon Cisco's return Tonia quickly falls in Dunn, hoping to collect the $5,000 offered for his capture, dead or alive.

Director Raoul Walsh was not only to have directed In Old Arizona, but was also reportedly set to star as The Cisco Kid himself. As an actor, Walsh had enjoyed some acclaim in the Gloria Swanson meller Sadie Thompson, in which Walsh had memorable supporting part. However, on a drive back to Los Angeles from Utah, Walsh was surprised by a jackrabbit that jumped through the glass windshield of his car, and the flying glass (to say nothing of the creamed rabbit) scarred his face and Walsh eventually lost an eye. Because of this, so the story goes, the picture was recast with Warner Baxter, an actor best remembered today as the driven stage director in 42nd Street (1932). (Further adding to the freakishness of it all is the nickname Tonia Maria gives The Cisco Kid - Conejito: "little rabbit.") However, the late William K. Everson writes that Walsh was to have played Lowe's role, not Baxter's, an assertion much more plausible given Walsh's unproven ability to carry a picture and the nature of his role in Sadie Thompson.

Released on Christmas Day 1928, In Old Arizona was the first all-talking sound-on-film feature (versus sound via synchronized disc), and reportedly the first talkie shot outdoors, though probably a number of shorts predate it.

By today's standards, In Old Arizona is tough sledding. While some of the earliest talkies are still pretty entertaining today (this critic is especially fond of 1929's Sally and 1930's They Learned About Women, for instance), In Old Arizona has too much talk and hardly any action. Except for the stagecoach robbery at the beginning, and a couple of shots fired at the very end, there's no action at all in the usual Western sense. Most of the picture is photographed like a stage play, with one long scene played out on a single set between two or three characters, followed by another long scene played out on a single set between two or three characters.

Except for Baxter, the other leading performances are quite awful and/or dated, playing very much like the exaggerated emoting satirized so amusingly in Singin' in the Rain. Dorothy Burgess's eye-rolling, hip-swaggering Latina is so outrageously over the top it suggests something comedienne Andrea Martin might have spoofed to perfection on SCTV. Edmund Lowe, a superior actor, is saddled with awful dialogue and an exaggerated Brooklyn accent. "It's a cruel woild, goily!" he tells Tonia Maria.

The film abounds in clumsy, unfunny humor, including the repeated use of braying donkeys to punctuate gags. Another peculiarity about the script is the constant name-dropping, everyone from President McKinley to Laura Jean Libbey. As the film is set around the turn of the century, most of the names would have been familiar to 1929 audiences. After all, this was barely 30 years into their past, just as the mention of Nixon, etc., would be to us now. Still, it's overdone and awkward.

Baxter is somewhat better, partly because the larger-than-life Cisco Kid calls for the kind of high key playing the other roles do not, and partly because of the undercurrent of fatalism Baxter subtly provides the character. On the surface he's cheery and romantic, but deep inside he's grown tired of staying one step ahead of the law, and disappointed when he learns he can't turn to Tonia Maria to comfort him. In this sense Baxter's Oscar win is not so surprising, or the fact that he would return to the character in The Cisco Kid (1931), which also featured Lowe; and again in Return of the Cisco Kid (1939).

Video & Audio

For a nearly 80-year-old movie, In Old Arizona holds up reasonably well. There are scratches and myriad other imperfections, but for a film this old we should be grateful that it survives at all. Happily, the DVD includes the original overture and exit music (featuring "My Tonia," a catchy tune by Buddy G. DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson), both of which run a little over a minute.

The bigger issue is the audio, which Fox presents in both standard English Mono and what's called "Historical English Mono (unrestored)." The DVD defaults to the former, which goes overboard with the noise reduction to the point where the dialogue is actually less clear than that heard on the "Historical" audio track. That option, despite a lot of hiss (which soon becomes white noise anyway), is really the one to listen to. Yellow English hard-of-hearing subtitles are included, as well as subtitles in Spanish. There are no Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Getting though In Old Arizona isn't easy, but it's a film Western fans and early-talkie buffs should experience at least once.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.