(3 of 3)
In Old Kentucky (Twentieth Century-Fox), last Will Rogers picture to be released, is in his familiar vein, has a homespun quality evolved with a good deal of necessary modernization from Charles T. Dazey's old stage piece the one where the girl puts on jockey clothes, rides Greyboy to victory, wins the Old South medal, and redeems the family fortune. Good humored, unpretentious, In Old Kentucky is somehow more suitable than something grander would have been as the swan song of a man beloved because he created laughter and dispensed with stuck-up ways. If it creaks a bit at times, its gags go far to redeem it, particularly the Race Day sequence when Greyboy, which Rogers has been training as a mudder, has to cope with a fast one called Emperor. A rain maker (Etienne Girardot), with an insane machine which shoots out rockets, is employed to help the horse. Just when everything seems lost a rocket hits a water tank, releasing floods in which old Grey-boy gallops past his rivals. If a box-office record broken by Steamboat Round the Bend means anything, In Old Kentucky may be further proof that Rogers was the first star in cinema history who could draw even better dead than he could alive.
