Love and the Law in a Terrific Tangle

A Stranger in Town is a competent B picture from MGM in 1943.

It starred Frank Morgan, best remembered as the title character in The Wizard of Oz. As Wikipedia says, a typical Morgan role was “a befuddled but good hearted middle-aged man.” In this case, his character spends much of the movie playing good-hearted and befuddled when in fact he’s a sharp and sometimes cranky Supreme Court judge on vacation in a small town.

The movie’s young couple was played by Richard Carlson, as the small-town lawyer, and Jean Rogers, as the justice’s prim clerk. Rogers had played Dale Arden in the Flash Gordon serials and was hoping for better roles at MGM. Carlson went on to star in Creature from the Black Lagoon before establishing himself in television as both actor and director. So all three principals are best known for their roles in fantastika.

It was refreshing to see a movie that reflected the New Deal belief that honest government was a good thing that people deserve. In real life, we’ve gone from the post-Reagan attitude that honest government was the best version of a bad thing that we could hope for to the current dismissal of good government being possible at all.