Summary
Rosie, a Y.W.C.A. gym instructor, is fired from her job after getting too rough with one of the girls and subsequently learns she has inherited the Rough Neck Rancho. Deciding to bring the ranch up to date with a feminine touch, Rosie faces resistance from the cowboys, who resent her authority. When she orders them to shave their mustaches, they retaliate by hiring Indians to attack the ranch house. However, the plan backfires, and the Indians end up fighting the cowboys. In the end, Rosie emerges victorious after a fistfight with the burly foreman, Red Bill, and the ranch settles down to peace and quiet with the cowboys clean-shaven and paired up with the women.
Synopsis
Rosie is a Y. W. C. A. gym instructor in the East. Coincident with her getting a little too rough with one of the girls, knocking her out and being fired from her job as athletic director, Rosie is advised of the fact that she has acquired a piece of real property in the form of the Rough Neck Rancho. There is nothing for her to do but go West, going Horace Greely one better by setting out for the Rough Neck Rancho with the idea of bringing it up right and proper with deft feminine touches. These touches turned out to be deft, but scarcely feminine, inasmuch as they were blows from Rosie's husky mitt. Naturally, a bunch of bewhiskered and devil-may-care cowboys resented the innovation of a woman manager, and when Rosie ordered the foreman and all the rest of them to shave their mustaches, it was a little too much for hard boiled Bill and his gang of leather-necked cowboys. Rosie imported a bunch of strikebreakers, some of her own girl pals, who were nicely settled in the ranch house. Bad Bill hit upon the brilliant idea of hiring a bunch of Indians to attack the ranch house, scare the wits out of the Eastern young ladies and otherwise maintain the morale of the men folks around Rough Neck Rancho. It was a bad day for the Indians and a worse day for the cowboys, as it turned out, for after Rosie and her cohort of Sure-Shot Susie's finished mopping off the Indians out of the barricades of windows, and after three or four Indians had bitten the dust after good old-fashioned melodramatic style, the redskins turned around and licked the tar out of all the cowboys for putting them up to such a hazardous undertaking. By this time one or two of the cowboys had fallen for the lure of the women folks and had sacrificed their flowing whiskers, their sole pride and joy, under the telling fire of Cupid's darts. Red Bill, the burly foreman, was finally vanquished by Rough Neck Rosie in a fist fight which was not exactly fair but thoroughly effective. Bill got the final wallop when he wasn't looking by one of Rosie's pals planted behind a carpet before which the fight took place. At the end of the second reel of desperate milling Rosie and her pals are victorious and the Rough Neck Rancho settles down to peace and quiet and every clean-shaven cowboy has a little milkmaid on his arm.
Motion Picture News, November 1, 1919
Review Excerpt
"Wild and Western, a 1919 film directed by Scott Darling and Frank Roland Conklin, is a Western comedy that tells the story of Rosie, a Y.W.C.A. gym instructor who inherits the Rough Neck Rancho. With her no-nonsense attitude and feminine touch, Rosie sets out to bring the ranch up to date, much to the dismay of the cowboys who work there.The film begins with Rosie getting fired from her job after getting too rough with one of the girls, and subsequently learning that she has inherited the Rough ..."
