Way Out West (1930)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) In many ways, there isn’t much to gnaw upon in Way Out West—it’s a comedy western made at a very rough stage of American filmmaking, with sound technology not meshing particularly well with the on-location shooting and a not-so-great image quality. The story, about a city slicker huckster being forced to pay back his debts on a tough-guys ranch, is amusing but not particularly revolutionary. But the one exception to this autopilot comedy western is not a small one—dating from the wilder and woollier Pre-Code era, Way Out West was freer to be quite suggestive. Lead actor William Haines was one of the few acknowledged homosexual leading men in Hollywood at the time, and if you know where to look, the film is crammed with saucy allusions about him being in a big macho camp. (As per the film’s most noticeable double entendre goes: “I’m the wildest pansy you ever picked.”) It’s not a consistent queer reading of the film, as a romance is forced into the plot and the dialogue loses its sassiness in its last act, but it does add a lot to a film that was effectively banned through the Production Code years and could have been forgotten along the way. Nowadays, well, Way Out West becomes one of the most interesting westerns of the early 1930s because it’s so off-colour.