Montana Moon

Starring Joan Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian, and Ricardo Cortez, the film focuses on the budding relationship between a city girl and a rural cowboy.

However, to their surprise, John Prescott is delighted for the couple, and believes that Larry is the kind of person who can finally settle Joan.

She wants to go back to New York, where the couple can live comfortably, but Larry feels it is his duty as a husband to provide for his wife, and having her father take care of him is not an option.

[4] As opposed to filming in Monument Valley or in California's Sierra Nevadas, director Malcolm St. Clair sent the cast to Montana for location shooting.

The change in scenery and remoteness of the location helped create a strong sense of cohesion among the cast and crew, who spent most of their off hours together playing games and rehearsing scenes.

[2][7] Film historian Ruth Anne Dwyer considers the censoring of Montana Moon as “sabotage” and a harbinger of even more “extreme restrictions” that would be imposed on pictures when the Breen office took over censorship duties for Hollywood.

“It is a production that is equipped with poor dialogue and also one that is frequently lacking in good taste” from a director, Malcolm St. Clair, “whose work on silent films won him considerable distinction.” The vocals from Joan Crawford lack “sound perspective” though “Miss Crawford appears to enjoy her rôle and sometimes her acting is quite fair.” Hall summarizes the Montana Moon “an interminable, amateurish talking picture, with spasmodic snatches of melody” with a plot “that most of the time takes itself only too seriously.”[9]