Dennis O'Keefe (Jerry O'Connor), Cecilia Parker (Jane Delano), Harry Carey (Pinky Delano), Nat Pendleton (Buddy Buttle), Addison Richards (Ed Eberhart), Charley Grapewin (Doc Heath), Alan Curtis (Rocks Rivera), Tom Collins (Lefty Simmons), Tom Neal (Hank Hogan), Frank Orth (Mac McKelvy), Si Jenks (Jenkins), Frank M. Thomas (Jim Nixon), Clayton Moore (intern), Barnbara Bedford (woman in movie house), Helen Jerome Eddy (lab analyst), Fred Frame, Fred Friday, Rex Mays, Louis Meyers, Kelly Petillo, Art Sparks, Joel Thorne, Ronnie Householder (racing car drivers), Walter Soderling (Fowler), Lee Phelps (Jim Webster), King Mojave (Smitty Smith), John Kelly (towing man), Roger Gray (policeman).
The movie is saved and the annoying hero is saved. Pendleton is cast improbably as a hayseed.
Do you think any race car driver can negotiate a track blindfolded while going over a hundred miles per hour, even with someone giving a whistle at one of the tricky turns? That's one of the idiocies of this film, which asks us to suspend disbelief once too often.
I am 76 years old. A few days ago something caused me to dredge from the past a faint memory of a race car movie I saw when I was 8 years old.
Directed by Edward Sedgwick, based on Sir Malcolm Campbell's novel "Salute to the Gods", screenplay by Milton Merlin and Byron Morgan, this film features the ever annoying Dennis O'Keefe in the title role, first name Jerry, as an obnoxious country bumpkin that becomes a race car driver. The underrated Nat Pendleton is the highlight of the film, playing (as usual?
