BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Robert J. Maxwell On the run from the law, spiffily dressed cowboy Gable rides into town and hears tell about Wagon Mound, a settlement outside of the cosmopolitan urban center, run by the five McDade widows. Yep, there's the old lady who runs the spread with a gnarled and iron fist, Jo Van Fleet, who deserves an oscar every time she plays a stubborn old lady, either for acting or for overacting. Then there's these four young widows, Jean Willis, Eleanor Parker, Barbara Nichols, and Sarah Shane. They all get gussied up just because there's now a man around but Van Fleet will have none of that flirting and frottage and other stuff. She don't hold with it. But why, you -- the discerning viewer ask -- why did Gable want to get into this nest of mixed-up women in the first place. Well, I'll tell you. He done heard in the big city that there was one hundred thousand dollars buried someplace on that land but nobody knew where it was. The widows' husbands stole it but then got theirselves blown up without revealing where they'd kept the stash. One of the McDade boys got away but he's been gone for years. So Gable is now in loco visitor. Just curious, kind of, about the location of all that gold.Van Fleet remains skeptical and keeps a weather eye on Gable but the others get glandular by degrees. Nichols is anxious to hop in the sack with Gable at once. Willis too. She even stops smoking cigars. Shane is girlishly eager. Only Eleanor Parker, using a throaty voice that virtually crackles with hostility, holds back. She and Gable had something in common, too, she being from Cedarville and he from Cadiz, both in the great state of Ohio.Act Two gets a little sluggish and talky. It has Gable investigating the four poor sobbing widows who are overjoyed to see him. He wafts from one to the other, leaving a cloud of pheromones behind him and inquiring about the location of that buried gold. En fin, he discovers it and runs off with Eleanor Parker after seeing to it that the gold is returned to those who earned it. The end is abrupt and strains credulity. I kept expecting the return of one of Ma's "boys" and a final shootout. But no.It was shot around what was then the little town of St. George, Utah. I, an alien gentile, enrolled in the tiny community college not long after the picture was completed and some of the structures still stood -- more or less. The community seemed to take with aplomb the fact that so many Westerns and historical epics had been filmed there. I tried to sign up as an extra for "They Came to Cordura" but was rejected when I expressed doubt about my ability to gallop a cavalry horse. My plea that I was a quick study and that they had so few horses in Newark fell on deaf ears.

Spikeopath The King and Four Queens is directed by Raoul Walsh and written by Margaret Fits and Richard Alan Simmons. It stars Clark Gable, Jo Van Fleet, Eleanor Parker, Jean Willes, Barbara Nichols and Sara Shane. A CinemaScope/DeLuxe Color production, music is by Alex North and cinematography by Lucien Ballard.Utterly delightful froth! Plot essentially finds Gable as a crafty drifter who learns about a group of women holed up in a ghost town who are sitting on a hoard of stolen gold. The four beauties, and their tough as old boots mother-in-law, are the wives and mother of outlaw brothers who stole the gold but who are now all presumed dead. Gable romances the four dames with the intention of locating the gold and clearing off first chance he gets, but that is far easier sounding than it is in principal!It's all a set-up for a tale of sexual frustration and subversion of male dominance. That the Production Code renders much of the narrative to suggestion, choice scripting and fill in the gaps ourselves moments, is unfortunately a given, but it's all played with a glint in its eye and there's still a cheekiness, a sexiness, about the picture that strikes the right chords. Sometimes it's an uneasy blend of drama and comedy, but when it hits its straps, such as a wonderful dance sequence, it has the quality to land the smile firmly on your face. And this even if the final is somewhat an anti-climax.Production wise it's a beauty. The cast are having a great old time of it, with the four younger ladies revelling in flirting about with the older and distinguished Gable. But it's Van Fleet who owns the movie, her tough old buzzard act is laced with maternal sadness and stoic strength and it underpins the whole story. Ballard's colour photography is gorgeous, with the location filming out of Calabasas, Snow Canyon and St. George proving to be magnificent backdrops, while North's musical accompaniments are pleasingly non obtrusive.Neither uproariously funny or dramatically potent it's a film caught somewhere in the middle of both. Yet on this occasion it really doesn't matter, it's like a good old glass of bourbon, enjoyably warm while ingested but the buzz soon wears off at closing time. 7/10

Neil Doyle Surely stars like CLARK GABLE and ELEANOR PARKER deserved better material at their home studio than this trifle about hidden gold and its effect on The King (Gable struts around like he's just left his throne for some slumming in a western shack), and four Queens (lovely looking ladies who seem out of place in this mock western).It's a light-hearted romp for all concerned, except JO VAN FLEET who gives a dynamo performance as the tough old westerner who is hiding the loot from a bank robbery committed by her now deceased sons. When Gable comes sniffing around to discover the loot (which he endeavors to do by charming the four widows into revealing where the gold is hidden), it sets up a series of mildly suspenseful scenes where we wonder how the whole thing is going to end.Since it's all played in rather tongue-in-cheek style with Gable handling the ladies with his usual masculine charm, it makes a rather faint impression when the tale ends without much of a bang and maybe one or two revelations.Credit has to go to Gable and his co-star ELEANOR PARKER, both of whom share some effective moments in a rather weak tale that comes off as mildly disappointing as they ride off into the sunset together.

Ilya Mauter The King and Four Queens marked the fourth time Raoul Walsh tried his hand in directing a motion picture in Cinemascope, the first three of them being Battle Cry, The Tall Man and The Revolt of Mamie Stover the second of them being also the first film out of three in totality that Walsh made with legendary Clark Gable. In The King and Four Queens Gable plays a handsome middle-aged adventurer Don Kehoe, known in the West for his skills in using a gun who comes to a rancho called Wagon Mound with its entire population consisting of five women, four of them being beautiful widows of the McDade gang brothers recently killed while attempting to rob a bank. They are led by a tough middle-aged Ma McDade (Jo Van Fleet) who is quite feared and respected not only by the four young widows under her command but also by a population of all villages and towns a few hundreds miles around the ranch. Promptly upon our hero's arrival, the rivalry among the four sisters as about conquering of Don Kehoe's heart ensues, resulting in many insignificant troubles manly for the old mother-chief. The purpose of Don Kehoe's joining of such a pleasant company nonetheless is a large sum of money that, as a word goes around, is hidden at the ranch and which hiding place he ought to find by any means. Overall the average Western as it is, The King and Four Queens provides much less viewing pleasure then one may expect from an average one, but nonetheless it has its interesting moments and is a worth watching experience for a genre fan. 6/10