The running time of 70 minutes indicates that this film was intended as a "B"-feature, or at best as the top half of a strong double bill. Yet, by "B"-feature standards, it has been rather lavishly produced. It opens in the hamlet of Lone Star, Texas, where a couple of hundred of the citizenry have gathered to farewell the heroine. Soon afterwards, we find ourselves plumb in the centre of the jostling, crowded streets of New York City, and it is not until that scene has concluded that we pick up Messrs Reagan and Morris and not until they have had a run-in with Hobart Cavanaugh that the curtain finally opens on the interior of their office (where it is safe to assume the original play was set).
The film then settles down to lots of talking, but the impression of a filmed stage play is lessened by the rapidity of the talk, the general fast pace and swift movement of the proceedings with characters dashing madly from one door to another, and the fact that the screenwriters have opened the play up with many brief excursions to other sets and scenes. The bulk of the action however, still takes place in the office. And the fact remains that the film is still a rather talky 69 minutes. Some songs would help to provide relief. Not only could they have been inserted quite naturally into the action, they would have fleshed out the film's running time to "A"-feature length. However, we have to judge the film as it is, and not as we would like it to be.
The basic idea of the plot was used again, with considerable variations, by Mel Brooks in The Producers, a much funnier and much wittier film. The plot is old-hat and the characters of An Angel From Texas are one-dimensional caricature - still, for all their lack of dimension, they are played with considerable vitality. Wayne Morris and Ronald Reagan are ideally cast as a couple of fast-talking confidence men - and they are more believable in this type of role than as the sympathetic hero figures they so often attempted to portray! Eddie Albert is perfect too as the schnook of the title and while Rosemary Lane makes little impression as the heroine there is a solid supporting cast headed by Jane Wyman (looking more attractive here than in her later films as queen of the Universal weepies), Ruth Terry (a delightfully vindictive leading lady), Hobart Cavanaugh (the put-upon Robelink), Milburn Stone (a flashy gangster), Tom Kennedy and Ralf Harolde (his amusingly sinister strong-arm boys). John Litel over-acts his brief part as an attorney, but the rest of the cast is first-rate.
Ray Enright's direction is very smooth, his fast pacing and deft timing making the situations and wisecracks as funny as possible. Other production credits are likewise professionally able. The music score is pleasant, the costumes and sets reasonably attractive, the film editing unobtrusive. Enright knows when and how to use the camera to get an effect: there are some pleasing uses of the track and dolly early on in the film. Generally, however, the camerawork like the lighting photography is inclined to be routine.
