Director – Arthur Lubin, Screenplay – Oscar Brodney & David Stern, Story – Robert Arthur, Producer – Leonard Goldstein, Photography (b&w) – Irving Glassberg, Music – Frank Skinner, Special Photography – David S. Horsley, Art Direction – Bernard Herzbrun & Emrich Nicholson. Production Company – Universal-International.
Cast
Donald O’Connor (Peter Stirling), [uncredited] Chill Wills (Voice of Francis), Piper Laurie (Frances Travers), Cecil Kellaway (Colonel Travers), Jessie White (Frank Damer), Barry Kelley (Roy Mallory), Vaughn Taylor (Carrington), Hayden Rorke (Rogers)
Plot
Peter Stirling tries to shows his boss how Francis the mule can talk only for nothing to happen, whereupon Peter is dismissed from his job at the bank. Wandering through the countryside with Francis, Peter is forced to spend the night in a field. In the morning, Peter wakes to find Francis has been taken to the stables of Colonel Travers. He is offered a lift by Travers’ granddaughter Frances and takes a liking to her. Francis is able to pass on to Peter gossip he heard from the other horses that lets him know in advance which horse is going to win at the race. As a result, Peter is able to make a winning. This becomes of interest to the track owners who suspect Peter is on a syndicate. With Colonel Travers in danger of losing his property and horses, Peter decides the only way to help him out is to get a horse that nobody believes will win to enter the derby.
Francis (1950), a comedy starring Donald O’Connor as a G.I. stationed in Burma dealing with a talking mule, was an unexpected hit. It spawned six sequels. Francis Goes to the Races was the first of these and was followed by Francis Goes to West Point (1952), Francis Covers the Big Town (1953), Francis Joins the WACS (1954), Francis in the Navy (1955) and Francis in the Haunted House (1956). All but the last star Donald O’Connor who eventually became sick of the role and was replaced by Mickey Rooney in the final film. The uncredited Chill Wills also voiced the role of Francis in all of the films except the last one.
Each of the Francis sequels seems stuck with the problem of what exactly do you keep doing with the premise of a straight man and a smart ass talking mule companion. As the sequels progressed, we started to see the two being placed into increasingly more unlikely situations – the Navy, the Women’s Army Corps, a newspaper office, even a haunted house. The locale here is the racetrack where at least the screenwriters seem to write with an insider’s knowledge of the industry and its vernacular.
Francis Goes to the Races comes with the advantage of a screenplay co-written by Robert Arthur who had just come from the great Harvey (1950) the previous year. It, like the sequels, shuffles the same gags around in a slightly different location. Much of the humour is still based around situations where either Donald O’Connor expects Francis to talk in front of others and he doesn’t, or else with Francis talking unexpectedly. There is even an extended sequence based around Francis getting drunk.
(l to r) Piper Laurie, Francis and Donald O’Connor
There is still wet behind the ears Donald O’Connor, who resembles a poor man’s Danny Kaye. Chill Wills provides the voice of Francis, delivering a series of smart-ass gags in a lazy, cynical Southern drawl. The film does have the advantage of the female lead played by a young Piper Laurie, later known for memorable roles in The Hustler (1961), Carrie (1976) and tv’s Twin Peaks (1990-1).
The racetrack setting makes the film into another Sports in Fantastic Cinema entry. It follows the same essential tropes of the genre – a rank outsider who knows nothing is thrown into the field but excels because he has a unique advantage (a mule that talks to the other horses and is able to know the results of each race in advance). Other tropes of the genre follow – such as the know-nothing idiot placed into the all-or-nothing big race where the home turf of his object of affection is all banked on his winning the event while everyone says there is no chance of doing so. The basics of the plot were later recycled as the excruciating Bobcat Goldthwaite film Hot to Trot (1988).
Arthur Lubin (1898-1985) was a prolific director who made some seventy films between the 1930s and 1950s. His other films of genre note include:- the transplanted brain film Black Friday (1940); the Abbott and Costello film Hold That Ghost (1941); the Claude Rains Phantom of the Opera (1943); Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944); the fantasy Night in Paradise (1946); the comedy It Grows on Trees (1952) about trees that grow money; The Thief of Bagdad (1961); and The Incredible Mr Limpet (1964) about a man who turns into a porpoise.
