The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend

Plot

Hot-headed Winifred "Freddie" Jones (Betty Grable) is a saloon singer in the Old West who catches her boyfriend, gambler Blackie Jobero (Cesar Romero), flirting with another woman and takes a shot at him with the six-shooter she always carries. Unfortunately, she hits a Judge (Porter Hall) instead, so she and her friend Conchita (Olga San Juan) take it on the lam. When they get to a tiny hole-in-the-wall town, Freddie and Conchita are mistaken for the new schoolmarm and her Indian maid. They meet the local muckety-mucks, including wealthy Charles Hingelman (Rudy Vallee), owner of a valuable gold mine, who starts to romance Freddie. When Blackie shows up while tracking Freddie down, complications ensue.

Cast

Cast notes:

Songs

Production

Earl Felton's original screen story was titled "The Lady from Laredo", and the film had the working titles of "Teacher's Pet" and "The Blonde from Bashful Bend". The film had been scheduled to go into production in September 1947, but was "temporarily shelved" in October because Fox production head Darryl F. Zanuck was concerned about the high cost of doing a film in Technicolor. While the production was delayed, Sturges made Unfaithfully Yours (1948) as his first film for Fox.

An early draft of the screen play, dated 29 December 1947 indicates that Sturges was considering June Haver in the role of Freddie, even though Betty Grable had already been announced as starring. In the script, Sturges wrote:

It is my habit, when writing a play, to cast the parts as, in my mind, each character makes his first appearance. Occasionally a stranger walks in and I am uneasy about his looks and the sound of his voice, but usually as he pauses in the doorway I recognize an old friend whose talents I admire and about whose fitness for the part I have no doubts.

As was usually the case on Sturges' films, the censors at the Hays Office had concerns about the script for The Beautiful Blonde... which had been submitted to them. Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code, warned Fox that it "contains entirely too much dialogue and action which concerns itself – in a quite blunt and pointed way – with sex." The Office approved a draft script submitted on 23 September 1948.

The Beautiful Blonde... was in production from late September to late November 1948, with an additional sequence shot in early January 1949. It's unclear whether Sturges or another director worked on the January shoot, which was to change the ending of the film at the insistence of Zanuck. The film premiered in Hollywood and New York City on 27 May 1949 and went into general American release in June. It was marketed with the tagline: She had the biggest Six-Shooters in the West!

The film was budgeted at an estimated $2,260,000 and brought in during its initial American release only about $1,489,000. The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend was released on video in the U.S. on 25 May 1989.