Rio Rita (1929)

Rio Rita (1929), directed by Luther Reed, 3 stars

A mysterious bank robber known as “The Kinkajou” has been robbing banks along the Mexican border.  Captain Jim Stewart of the Texas Rangers, masquerading in faux Mexican sartorial splendor, arrives in secret with orders to bring the criminal to justice.  Another recent arrival is Chick Bean, accompanied by his lawyer, who has come for a very different purpose:  to obtain a Mexican divorce.  Mayhem ensues with musical accompaniment and justice is finally served in the end.

If you’ve ever seen the 1929 version of “Rio Rita,” you’d probably never guess that it was a huge hit, RKO’s biggest according to Wikipedia until “King Kong” came along four years later.  Of course, it was also one of newcomer RKO’s very first and most expensive films, so it had very little competition.  By modern standards, the film would certainly strike most viewers as static and stilted, but not pre-depression audiences.  The recent addition of sound technology was irresistible, and the public flocked to movie houses to experience the novelty of actors talking and singing.  If films like this were for all practical purposes merely Broadway productions restaged for the camera, that alone was more than enough to attract audiences that would otherwise never set foot on the Great White Way.  Similarly, “Rio Rita” provides audiences of today a window into what Broadway musicals looked and sounded like in the 1920s.

This is fine for historians, social scientists, and aficionados, but why should the rest of us watch this film?  Well, like everything else, I guess that depends.  For me, another draw was the fact that it features the first screen pairing of two under-appreciated comic performers, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, who made ultimately more than 20 films together for RKO between 1929 and 1937.  Often remembered incorrectly as a vaudeville team turned film duo, they were actually cast independently and performed for the first time together in the Ziegfeld-produced Broadway production of “Rio Rita” two years earlier.  Wheeler and Woolsey were the only members of the original cast brought to Hollywood to reproduce their roles on film.  Other members of the film's cast include John Boles (“Frankenstein”), Bebe Daniels (“42^nd Street), and Dorothy Lee, Wheeler’s love interest in this and nearly all of the pair’s subsequent films.

I was also drawn to the film because I knew that the final act was shot in two-strip Technicolor.  After seeing Wheeler and Woolsey in all of their other feature films exclusively in black and white, the prospect of seeing them perform in color was too enticing to pass up.

Finally, I’ve always wanted to screen the film because, up until recently, it was nearly impossible to see.  MGM remade "Rio Rita" in 1942 with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and when they did, they pulled the original print from circulation.  (They would do  the same thing a year later with "Girl Crazy" (1932), another RKO feature starring Wheeler and Woolsey.)  Things that are scarce are perceived to have value--in some cases more than they deserve.  "Rio Rita" may not be the lost treasure I hoped it would be, but despite its faults, I enjoyed it for what it is (or was).  And we should all be glad that contemporary audiences did as well.  If it weren't for the money they shelled out for tickets, the fledgling RKO studio may never have gone on to produce and distribute so many certified cinematic masterpieces (including "Citizen Kane").  Who would have thought we'd have Wheeler and Woolsey to thank for that?