A couple with a mutually consenting open-ended relationship fumble at the goal line and penalize themselves with jealousy and comeuppance. This is no Western as John Wayne portrays Lt. Denton, an Army cadet whose heroics on the football field (and with women) are graduating points of honor to everyone but Evelyn, the girl who loves him. And here is where the conflict begins...and eventually ends.
The first act quickly shows us the two of them together before Denton breaks off their relationship in which both agree was a mutually open-ended engagement: no promises. By happenstance, Evelyn later meets Denton’s superior (and the man who raised him) Col. Bonham while bidding on a signed football. The Colonel soon falls for the much younger Evelyn and when she discovers his relationship to Denton, she quickly acquiesces to a marriage proposal. She never tells her husband of the past relationship and when Denton is transferred to the Colonel’s post in Arizona (hence the film’s title), Denton begins to date Evelyn’s little sister Bonnie in retaliation. Fearing that he will marry Bonnie, especially after seeing him in a drunken revelry with another woman (mistakenly, it must be noted), she decides to accuse him of sexual assault. WTF?!
Let me take a moment and state my bias: I dislike John Wayne. So when a film makes me actually feel sorry for his character, shifts the sympathy (what little was accruing, mind you) from the previously jilted woman to his one-dimensional patriarchal entitled countenance, then I get angry. Evelyn turns out to be a rotten person, Denton is a prick, and neither had the decency to be forthright with the good Colonel until they have so much to lose. It is left undisclosed if poor Bonnie ever learns the truth! At least Evelyn doesn’t beg for the Colonel’s forgiveness as she packs her bags. But the Colonel proclaims his love and they embrace: but we’re left to ponder if it’s actually a happy ending.
Final Grade: (D)
