The Cowboy Quarterback Reviews

Neither Don Meredith, Roger Staubach, nor Danny White are anywhere in sight in this bland comedy about a football scout (William Demarest) who discovers a hick (Bert Wheeler) heaving sacks of potatoes around a general store and signs him up to quarterback the Green Bay Packers. Of course, the kid falls in with some gamblers and makes the inevitable last-minute push to extricate himself from their clutches in just enough time (40 seconds, to be exact) to win the Big Game. Switching the ball in question from horsehide to pigskin, COWBOY QUARTERBACK is based on a Ring Lardner short story that was adapted by Lardner and George M. Cohan as a play. The story first came to the screen, with a baseball setting, as FAST COMPANY (1929), and was remade as ELMER THE GREAT (1933) with Joe E. Brown in the lead.