Take Me to Town

Charming, American-as-apple-pie Old West comedy? Or barbed critique of religious hypocrisy? Sirk delivers both (plus songs) in this delightfully offbeat Technicolor confection. Ann Sheridan stars as Vermilion O’Toole, a brassy saloon singer on the lam who hides out in a small town where she becomes a surrogate mother to the three towheaded sons of the local preacher (tough-guy Sterling Hayden in an uncharacteristically wholesome role, though he still handily wastes a guy in a brawl before delivering a sermon). As the brash Vermillion’s presence elicits much hand-wringing from the congregation, Sirk exposes the sham piety of the moral majority. Take Me to Town was the first film produced by Ross Hunter, who would go on to collaborate with Sirk on several of his celebrated ’50s melodramas.