Wayne Morris and Ronald Reagan play a pair of fast-talking Broadway producers Mac McClure and Marty Allen in "Dames" director Ray Enright's "An Angel from Texas" who are flat broke and owe everybody money. They need to find a patsy to give them enough dough to put on their latest stage play with prima donna actress Valerie Blayne (Ruth Terry) who has the clout to count on them casting her because her hoodlum boyfriend 'Pooch' Davis (Milburn Stone of "Gunsmoke" fame) is about to be released from Alcatraz Prison. Peter Coleman (Eddie Albert) and Lydia Weston (Rosemary Lane) are a couple of clods from Texas; she dreams of seeing her name on a Broadway marquee as an actress, but the only job she can land is a secretary for the two scheming producers. Meantime, Peter Coleman is her sweetheart who saw her off on the bus from Lone Star, Texas, and is heartbroken when she appears to be the toast of Broadway but hasn't written her a line. Peter's mom gives him her life savings of $20-thousand and packs him off to New York City to buy a hotel. Unfortunately, Peter learns that New York City hotels cost at least a million apiece. He discovers his girlfriend on the street and learns that all the great critical notices that she sent him were not for shows in which she had been cast. Everybody in Lone Star thoughts that Rosemary had gotten high-handed and changed her name. Lydia didn't want the gossips back home to get wind of her misfortune.Now, she works for Morris and Reagan, and they must contend with the antagonistic Ruth Terry. Nevertheless, Mac and Marty persuade Peter to help produce the play on the condition that Lydia takes the leading lady role. During the final dress rehearsal, Lydia storms backstage with two of her boyfriend's henchmen and demands that she get the role. As it turns, out Mac and Marty had promised it to her all along and had duped the lovebirds into thinking that everything would work out. The surprise of surprises that thwarts Lydia is none other than Marty's wife Marge Allen (Jane Wyman) who had earlier won a fortune. Anyway, Mac and Mary agree to let Peter buy them out if he can drum up another $10-thousand in 24 hours. Naturally, Peter cannot persuade any of the Big Apple bankers to loan him the ten-grand. Unexpectedly, Marge gives Peter the loot if he agrees to play opposite Lydia because she thinks that it will be a successful farce. Mac and Marty happily cavort out of their office with Peter none the wiser about Valerie's boyfriend. As Mac and Marty are heading to the elevator, Lydia, and Chopper (Tom Kennedy) confront and inform them that Pooch plans to dynamite the stage. Later, we learn that Pooch doesn't plan to blow up the audience, only the actors. Pooch isn't prepared for what he sees when the play opens and he changes his mind. Mind you, even more laughs and surprises ensue.Everybody seems to think that the Mel Brooks' farce "The Producers" was the first to use the premise that Broadway producers could pull a fast one on audiences and have them laughing because a play was so bad that it was good. Clearly, Warner Brothers beat Brooks to the punch with "An Angel from Texas." Incidentally, "An Angel from Texas" was based on the George S. Kaufman stage play "The Butter and Egg Man." According to the Internet Movie Database's Trivia section, the play ran eight months, beginning September 1925 to April 1926, for a total of 243 performances. The change of title to "An Angel from Texas" doesn't necessarily refer to Lydia, but instead to Peter because he gets Lydia the starring role that she has wanted since she left Lone Star. Initially, you might not enjoy this goofy comedy if you catch only the first half-hour. Director Ray Enright and scenarists Fred Niblo, Jr., of "King of the Jungle" and Bertram Millhauser of "The Texans" never let the audiences catch their collective breaths with all the antics that are packed into this play. "An Angel from Texas" is hilarious from fade-in to fade out.

Strictly a by-the-numbers routine Warner Bros. programmer with RONALD REAGAN and WAYNE MORRIS as brash Broadway would-be producers in need of money to put on a Broadway show. Familiar territory for many a flimsy film plot. EDDIE ALBERT is the country bumpkin they try to con into putting his $20,000 into backing the show--thus the film's title AN ANGEL FROM Texas.The fast-talking routines by Reagan, Morris and a very blonde and bleached JANE WYMAN at her snappiest are hardly the stuff of "bright farce" as an original review from The N.Y. Times states. The dull ROSEMARY LANE is supposed to be a gal with ambitions to become a great actress.They're all capable performers and give their all to a tiresome show biz story that never is anything more than a routine programmer not worth a second look--or even a first one.Based on a play by George S. Kaufman, it's strictly small time stuff, directed in the usual Warner Bros. frenzied style by Ray Enright.

Eddie Albert follows his sweetheart from Texas to Manhattan. She wants to be a great star, a la Madame Cornell. He is not interested in the stage but crafty producers Morris and Reagan talk him into becoming the title character.All the above give it their very best. Albert is a truly appealing, underrated performer and he is charming here. In addition, Jane Wyman is hilarious as one of the producer's wife who gets in on the act. When we first see her she is wearing a geometrically shaped hat, like those worn by Irene Dunne when she was playing chic and not frumpy. But this hat is covered in spangles. The hat alone is worth talking a look.Ruth Terry is also very entertaining as the diva originally hired to play the lead in the play. One big question, regarding her and her cronies' tenacity, is whether or not there were any other plays on Broadway at the time this takes place. The play is not the greatest and her attachment to it is peculiar.The rest -- Well, no giving away the plot. Suffice it to say that "Curtain Call" does something quite similar and is as stylish, funny, and polished as this is increasingly desperate and ramshackle.

This Warner Brothers movie uses its juvenile B leads from BROTHER RAT in another version of George Kaufman's BUTTER AND EGG MAN. The dialogue is sharp and brittle, but only Ronald Reagan as a fast-talking, down-at-the-heels Broadway producer and Jane Wyman are spot on. Wayne Morris is miscast as Reagan's partner and Eddie Albert is dull in yet another go around as a put-upon nice guy.Jane Wyman was a wonderful comic actress at this stage in her career and this was precisely her meat: hair bleached blonde and talking a mile a minute. Unfortunately, in a few years she would win an Oscar for playing a mute in JOHNNY BELINDA and would never get a chance to be this entertaining again.