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Wild
and Woolly
Walter Brennan plays Hercules "Herk" Flynn, Withers's grandfather and de-facto guardian. Herk is a kind of frontier Renaissance man. In addition to keeping an eye on the spirited Withers— no small task by itself— he is a self-admitted former bandit as well as a sharpshooter and aspiring sheriff of Mesa City.
Alfalfa plays "Zero", a waifish, street-wise lad who seems to be an orphan and lives in a treehouse. At one point, Withers describes Zero as "my undercover man— boy, he doesn't miss a trick!" Indeed, Alfalfa's character seems to crave a kind of investigative mischief. Early on in "Wild and Woolly", Withers dispatches Alfalfa to eavesdrop on a meeting being held by a man named Edward Ralston (Berton Churchill), the president of the local savings and loan and the town's political power broker. At this meeting, Alfalfa discovers that Ralston is willing to grant a "gambling concession" to a couple of shady-looking city fellers so they can open and operate a casino next to City Hall. In return, Ralston asks for an "honorarium" based on a percentage of the casino's take.
Zero relays this news to Withers, Herk, and Frank Bailey, kindly publisher of the Mesa City Courier newspaper. Herk and Ralston, obviously born on opposite sides of the track, have a long-standing feud of unclear origin, so Herk uses this perceived proof of Ralston's corruption as impetus to run for honorary sheriff of Mesa City during the town's upcoming three-day jamboree to commemorate its 50th anniversary.
At an evening political rally, the stentorian Ralston makes a long-winded speech extolling the virtues of his own hand-picked candidate to oppose Herk Flynn. During the speech, Ralston's bratty son Chaunce sits on stage behind his father, near a cymbal. Withers, in the front row of the audience, disrupts Ralston's speech by hurling slingshot projectiles at the cymbal, making it seem like the noise is the fault of the notoriously clumsy Chaunce. Meanwhile, Alfalfa is outside plastering Ralston's sedan with "Flynn For Sheriff" handbills.
As the film progresses, we are treated to singing performances at a frontier cabaret by Withers and then Alfalfa, who provides a shrieking and faltering version of "When Did You Leave Heaven, Angel". The entrance to this cabaret is manned by a trouble-making bouncer named Dutch, played by Lon Chaney, Jr. prior to his ascendancy to quasi-stardom as the Wolfman.
The climax of the film centers around the final day of the Mesa City celebration. In what has to rank as one of the dumbest examples of civic event-planning in the history of the B-movie genre, Mesa City's town fathers decide to stage an elaborate re-enactment of a bank robbery that took place two generations earlier, which was, according to Ralston, thwarted by his own grandfather. Predictably, real-life bandits manage to actually rob the bank during the festivities and they make their escape in the confusion. During the escape, Alfalfa and Withers cower in a trunk in the back of the getaway stagecoach.
After having previously cancelled his decision to be sheriff, a reluctant Herk helps apprehend the bad guys after a brief chase through the outlying countryside. By the end of the film, we learn that bank president Ralston isn't really a bad guy, just a pompous egotist. Newspaper publisher Bailey even brokers a reconciliation between Ralston and Herk after both men admit that they can't remember what started their feud in the first place. This new era of good feeling is continued when Withers, at Alfalfa's urging, even kisses Ralston's son Chaunce, with whom she has been having an on-again, off-again spat throughout the course of the film.
This inoffensive but forgettable film is dominated by the performance of child star Withers. Although obviously talented, Withers's hammy, slightly overbearing performance makes us think that she would have been right at home in the MGM Little Rascals episodes of the Froggy Era. To the film's credit, Withers and Brennan (as Herk) do seem to enjoy an effective on-screen chemistry as grandfather and granddaughter. But the rest of the film is stocked with refugees from Central Casting, right down to the Hakawi-like Indians who populate the town's cabaret house.
With the exception of his harsh singing performance at the Pioneer Club, Alfalfa's Zero character is a rather quiet sort who, as mentioned, seems to live by himself in a treehouse. Zero professes at one point that he's not even sure how old he is. The most entertaining aspect of Alfalfa's rendition of "When Did You Leave Heaven, Angel" is the sequence just prior to our hero launching into song. He first whispers into the maestro's ear, then disgustedly waves the orchestra to abort their first attempt at accompaniment. Then, on the second try, the tiny cowboy crooner first confidently claps his hands together as a sort of timing mechanism, then, almost as an afterthought, pivots around on his heels and throws a two-armed "take it" gesture to the orchestra to signal he's ready to sing.
Jane Withers also starred six years later in another Alfalfa film, 1942's "Johnny Doughboy". And Lon Chaney Jr., who plays the sneering bouncer/bandit in "Wild and Woolly", appeared briefly some 21 years later in "The Defiant Ones", Alfalfa's final film. Berton Churchill, who played the officious bank president Edward Ralston, wound up appearing in 132 films prior to his death by accidental poisoning in 1940. His two most prominent roles were as a judge in 1932's "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" and as Henry Gatewood in "Stagecoach".
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