This sounds like it could be fun - the story of two female con artists who are on the lam in the 1890s. Okay the 1890s isn't an inherently funny period, at least not to men, but female con artists is at least different. And maybe this would've worked if original star Betty Hutton had been able to play the role. Instead Paramount went with Veronica Lake who is disastrously miscast.
I've watched a bunch of later-Paramount-era Lake movies recently and not liked her in any of them. She's all wrong here - lacking energy and verve in a part that needs, well, Hutton - or say Diana Lynn. I know that Lake was meant to play vamps but she is flat - and even worse, not sexy.
Joan Caulfield has some game as her sister but really is pretty and that's about it. Mind you neither have much of a character to play - you never get the sense these two are con artists or how they came to be con artists. I guess you assume it's because its the 1890s and women had it hard - which gives you automatic sympathy for them. Not ideal.
The plot has Barry Fitzgerald blackmail the two women into helping out, which has kind of yuck overtones since women were so enslaved during this time. I think it's easier to handle if you find Fitzgerald loveable. The girls are converted to niceness by the town - Fitzgerald gives away their money to people, and they love them for it. I'm sorry but that's a bit yuck, it's their money, even if it's stolen, and Fitzgerald stole it off them.
Why do they introduce the millionaire scammed by the girls (Harold Vermilyea) at the beginning and never see him again? Why don't they have the local bitch (Belulah Bondi) do something really bad? Why don't they have someone chasing after the girls - a detective or something?
They set up a sheriff (George Reeves) but he never seems to suspect the girls - he just falls in love with both and struggles to make up his mind, which makes him an idiot and ensures the love story is unsatisfactory.
They establish Lake has the more ruthless and greedy of the sisters, which is fine. But instead of making her a villain and Caulfield the goodie, as they probably should, Lake again is a-bit-bad-but-really-good in a way that undermines the film; she comes good, falls for Reeves (no chemistry, no build up, he's clearly better suited to Caulfield), and Caulfield has a conveniently invented alternate love interest.
It's another misfire from Paramount. Lake had some incredible luck early in her career, but karma came around and got her back in spades towards the end of her contract.
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