Boom Town

Tracy and Gable play two "wildcatters" -- oil hunters -- who are always at loggerheads and both manage to gain and lose several fortunes before the film's end. Colbert is the woman they both love; Lamarr is of course the "other" woman in husband Gable's life. A lot of fun scenes (especially when the 2 bullheaded oil barons finally duke it out), good characterizations (Morgan, as always, deserves a mention, this time as the slightly petty equipment broker they both rely on), but a somewhat predictable story, though well scripted. Ultra-conservative Mahin has spiced Tracy's rousing final speech (yes, he ALWAYS gets one) with the pro-business slant so favored by himself and exec-producer Mayer, managing to make this into sort of an anti-Capra comedy.

As one who has worked in the "oil patch" for 25 years, I feel that 'Boom Town' is the most realistic portrait of the industry (during that period) that has ever been put on film. The formation of the cartel mimics the origins of Standard Oil. Also, the 'feel' of the picture is right and the industry is not romanticized as in other films. Perhaps, as was noted in other comments, this is because of Gable's experience as a wildcatter.

Several others have noted, or objected to, Gable's speech about the nature of the industry. Yes, it is decidedly pro-business and anti-government, but it is not really laissez faire. The film argues for controlled production of oil fields to maximize their long-term benefit. This speech is amazingly prescient of our current crisis.

I watch this one every time it airs.

When one thinks of roles identified with Clark Gable, Boom Town does not immediately come to mind. Yet this film, done at what most would consider the high water mark of Gable's career (after Gone With the Wind and before Carole Lombard's death) was possibly his most personal role. Before he was actor Gable worked in the oil fields with his widowed father. After that he decided acting was a far easier way to make a living. But he actually lived the life that he and Spencer Tracy portrayed in Boom Town. He brings more to the part of Big John McMasters than any other part he ever did. I'm sure he was an unofficial technical consultant on the film.

The film is also an ode to laissez faire capitalism, maybe one of the most right wing films ever done in Hollywood. You will never hear Herbert Hoover's rugged individualism better justified than in Spencer Tracy's speech to the jury in Gable's anti-trust trial. One half of the script writing team was James Edward Grant who later did many of the more propagandistic films that John Wayne did.

Frank Morgan is his usual befuddled self, he had a patent on those parts. Claudette Colbert is fine as the woman both men love and Hedy Lamarr was her usual alluring self.

Great entertainment all around.

Boom Town (1940)

An expansive, fun-loving, rags to riches to rags to riches story of early oil prospectors. Wildcatters. Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy make the unlikely pair of men who join forces to strike it rich, and they're both lively and sharp on their game. The main women in both their lives is Claudette Colbert, and of course circumstances make both men fall in love with her. Guess who wins?

As the men find oil, then disaster, then more oil and more disaster, Colbert hangs on. Later in the movie, Gable in New York (during a successful few years) and he is caught up with an urban siren played by Hedy Lamar. To an audience used to film noir, we know she's a classic femme fatale, wanting something she shouldn't have and using what she does have to try and get it.

But this is pre-noir, and of course a Western in many ways. In fact, it's before the U.S. entered WWII, and it's slightly odd to see a sprawling tale of such important seeming events when the big events are happening in Europe. But it's sweeping and convincing in that 1940s Hollywood style that is kicking in, technically flawless, beautiful made in every way.

Throw in four great actors (as well as Frank Morgan, the man who the year before played the Wizard in that Oz movie) and you have a really excellent production. Gable as a youth even worked in the oil industry with his father, so he knew his stuff. Tracy, mad about details in his contact, was unhappy on the set and didn't get along with either woman, and it shows, once you know it.

Why isn't this a great classic, with everything going for it? I think the story. It is filled with so many clichés even these actors, under director Jack Conway, couldn't make it fresh. The clichés are great of course—the rivalry over the same woman, the improbably rise to wealth (and fall), but you see them with familiarity. And the suddenness of huge turns of fate as it propels forward are a bit grand to the point of grandiose. Even the end you can see coming, in the big view.

Still, I'd recommend this for the sheer joy of it all. Of course, Colbert and Gable were famous in the 1934 "It Happened One Night," and it's fun to see them six years later here. But even all the oil industry scenes, including a couple great disasters, are very well done and exciting stuff.

Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr star in "Boom Town," a 1940 film directed by Jack Conway. It's about wildcatters and friends, played by Gable and Tracy, who make money as partners, love the same woman, go their separate ways, reunite, all under the specter of oil rigs.

Gable has a role he owned, that of Big John, a tough guy, a man's man, kind of Rhett Butler goes wildcatting. Tracy is Jonathan Sand, his buddy, with a girl back home.

Big John meets a lady and falls for her - except it's Sand's girlfriend Elizabeth (Colbert) who's just arrived in town. Well, she had to choose between Clark Gable, matinée idol, and Spencer Tracy, a character actor whose talent gave him leading man status. She chooses Big John. Sand accepts it as best he can.

By now the two have struck oil and are in the big money. Eventually, Big John loses his part of the business to Sand, and he and Elizabeth leave the area in order to rebuild - and they do, big time. The couple end up in New York, where Big John meets a Big Beauty named Karen (Lamarr) and goes for her, threatening his marriage.

Everyone is very good in this absorbing movie, with Lamarr's knockout beauty a real asset. This is nothing against Colbert, who is stunning as well and excellent as Elizabeth. Gable and Tracy have good chemistry - in the end, this is really a buddy movie, and they're a good match. Gable is very sexy and at his peak here.

Very enjoyable, with great special effects - no expense spared for the four huge stars.