Richard Dix plays Yancey Cravet, a Westerner married to Sabra (Irene Dunn) but every bit as much in love with adventure.
So he drags Sabra and his son to Osage, where they start a newspaper and establish a respectable place in the community.
Cravet is a larger than life character, gunning down one bad man while preaching a sermon, taking on a band of bank robbers single handedly only to reject the reward money because one of the men was a friend, and spoiling his chance to become governor because he’s unwilling to cheat the Indians out of their land.
When the next land rush is announced, Yancey just has to go, this time leaving his family behind. He returns five years later, only to eventually disappear again, this time to work in the oil fields while Sabra tends the newspaper.
They’re reunited one last time, very briefly, and completely unexpectedly.
Review:
Cimarron was the first Western to win a best picture Oscar and the only one until 1990, when “Dances with Wolves,” starring Kevin Coster, repeated the feat.
The film lost money during its initial run, but that’s blamed mostly on the fact that it was released during some of the worst times of the Great Depression.
For the time, it was an expensive film to make. According to IMDb, the famous land rush sequence took a week to film, included 5,000 extras and the use of 28 cameramen, six still photographers and 27 camera assistants.
All that said, the film dates badly. And in this version and the 1960 remake it’s difficult to understand while Sabra’s character, far more sympathetic, puts up with her husband’s selfishness.
Directed by:
Wesley Ruggles
Cast:
Richard Dix … Yancey Cravet
Irene Dunne … Sabra Cravet
Estelle Taylor … Dixie Lee
Nance O’Neil … Felice Venable
William Collier Jr. … The Kid
Roscoe Ates … Jesse Rickey
George E. Stone … Sol Levy
Stanley Fields … Lon Yountis
Edna May Oliver … Tracy Wyatt
Robert McQuade … Louis Hefner
Judith Barrett … Donna Cravet
Eugene Jackson … Isaiah
Reggie Streeter … Yancy Cravet Jr.
Runtime: 123 min.
Memorable lines:
Sol Levy: “They will always talk about Yancy. He’s gonna be part of the history of the great Southwest. It’s men like him that build the world. The rest of them, like me… why, we just come along and live in it.”
Mrs. Tracy Wyatt: “One of my ancestors was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.”
Sol Levy: “That’s all right. A relative of mine, a fellow named Moses, wrote the Ten Commandments.”
Sabra Cravat: “Did you have to kill him?”
Yancy Cravat: “No, I could have let him kill me.”
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