Synopsis
The Night-Club Singer! The Handsome Gangster! The Country Girl! Here's a Grand Story!
A gangster hides out on a farm and falls for the farmer's daughter.
1941 Directed by Robert B. Sinclair
A gangster hides out on a farm and falls for the farmer's daughter.
Robert Sterling Marsha Hunt Virginia Weidler Paul Kelly Fay Holden Henry Travers Don Costello Carol Hughes Reed Hadley Ben Welden Theodore von Eltz Leon Belasco Mitchell Lewis Joe Yule Eddie Hart Jerry Jerome Steve Darrell William Tannen Veda Ann Borg Patricia Dane Charles Judels Bert Roach Russell Wade Marek Windheim
This is a remake of Hide-Out (1934) which starred Robert Montgomery and Maureen O'Sullivan. I'm not sure why there was a need to reboot it a mere 7 years later. There was nothing new to offer.
Robert Sterling plays the Montgomery role and he came up short. His redemption was less believable and he didn't have a nuanced performance like Montgomery did. Marsha Hunt was fine but I prefer O'Sullivan. Two things I did prefer in the later release were Virginia Weidler (instead of Mickey Rooney) as the pesky younger sibling and Henry Travers (instead of Whitford Kane) as the dad.
I don't know I found this to be a very cute picture, that probably has mostly to do with my fondness for Marsha Hunt, but Robert Sterling wasn't too bad either, a bit of a two dimensional character and not too much depth of anything, but still enjoyable enough.
I think what I gained most from this picture is that I most definitely would give up everything to live on a farm with Marsha Hunt.
I've unwillingly spent time on farms before, but there was never anyone like Marsha Hunt around to make me want to stay.
If I'd never seen the original, Hide-Out, I can't say what I'd thought of this. As it is... why did they bother? If I remember the original rightly, this seemed almost the exact same script and dialog, and filmed almost shot for shot. Even many of the sets were exactly the same. But there is one huge exception: the cast. And it's an interesting and indisputable proof that someone like Robert Montgomery, who appears so effortless, so always himself, was actually a terrific actor. He brought a tenderness, an understanding to this character that Robert Sterling just couldn't get at. There were just two things going for this production: Henry Travers and Virginia Weidler. They are both perfection.
"I'll Wait for You" from 1941 is an old plot, filmed in 1934 as "Hide- Out" and, with changes here and there, like "The Life of Jimmy Dolan," the bad guy who meets good people and reforms has been done many times.
This time it's Robert Sterling as Jack "Lucky" Wilson who is the guy who has to get out of town after putting the squeeze on some local merchants. Injured, he winds up on the farm of the Miller family, consisting of various animals and Ma and Pa Miller (Fay Holden and Henry Travers) and their two daughters, Lizzie (Virginia Weidler) and Pauline (Marsha Hunt). No big surprise, he falls for Pauline and grows to like and appreciate the…
Wasn't that big a fan of Robert Montgomery's Hide-Out (1934), so I wasn't too excited about a remake with Robert Sterling. Didn't add anything to the story. Perfectly watchable for a criminal reformed by love kind of thing.