Une femme extraordinaire

Lucy Gallant" stars Jane Wyman as a New York woman who, when passing through a muddy Texas boomtown, recognizes a business opportunity when she sees it.  Costar Charlton Heston plays a rancher who falls for her.  They have trouble agreeing on the terms of a relationship, so she devotes herself to her growing business concern and he plays the love-sick dogie, wishing she would see things his way.

The cast is the best part of this film.  Thelma Ritter, Claire Trevor and William Demarest play colorful characters, solidly performed. Joel Fluellen is uncredited as Summertime, a black man who partners with Lucy in her early success and becomes a trusted employee; the film could have used more of him.

This fish-out-of-water story, like "Giant", chronicles the era when wildcat oil strikes changed the economy, converting cowboys into the nouveau riche. Lucy proves to be an astute businesswoman. She parlays the sudden wealth of fashion-starved women into a local retail triumph.

Casey (Heston) is mystified by Lucy's choices, but still finds her attractive. Is it because of or in spite of the fact she's an enthusiastic go-getter? In many other films of the fifties, women sacrifice their dreams for romance; what will Lucy do?

First saw this movie on AMC over a decade ago, taped it, and love it. It's actually a good conglomeration of events during the Texas oil boom. The scenes of the hotels being so full and nothing for people to buy in the boom towns is very accurate. The development of the great department store is really telling the story of famed Texas department stores such as Neiman-Marcus, Joske's, Hemphill-Wells and others that brought world-class shopping to the oil and ranching areas of Texas. Heston's performance is great and he really pegs the personality of many older rancher friends I know. And, any lover of Texas politics will love seeing Governor Shivers play himself. Other folks are right, we need this on a good quality DVD - it just has too much good history of the oil boom and post WWII development in Texas to keep locked away.

Jane Wyman plays a refined and educated Eastern woman who arrives in a Texas Oil town to get married. After the wedding is off, she sells her trousseau to get the money to start a dress shop. After 20 years she runs the biggest department store in Texas and socializes with the Texas rich. Charlton Heston waits patiently in the background for her to realize that she can have love and a career. This is one of the few movies from this decade that allowed the leading lady to be something beyond a stereotypical 50's woman.

For many the costumes are the best part of the movie. The fancy department store has fashion shows with great 50's styles styles created by Edith Head and others. I would love for this to come out on DVD. It used to play on TV on Saturday afternoon about 30 years ago and I almost always watched it.

Imagine a New York socialite arriving at a desolate Texas oil town in the 1930s with four suitcases plus a few carry-ons. Poor Lucy Gallant stuck out like a sore thumb! One thing going for her was her ability to adapt to the situation in which is thrown into. She proved she had a head for business when she manages to sell her whole wardrobe to the wives of the new oil barons. These women were ripe for getting whatever fashions they could lay their hands on.

Lucy's success comes with a disappointment. Even though she loves Casey, the man who would end up being a millionaire, she feels she wants to pursue her career as a business woman. After all, she had started out of nothing to build the store of her dreams. Being a woman in that environment also brings her to the reality of seeing what she had built taken away from her during a sneaky maneuver by the man she trusted to help her run the business. In the end, Lucy realizes that being with Casey is a lot more fulfilling than the business she created.

Robert Parrish directed this Paramount release. Jane Wyman was the right choice to play Lucy. She was an intelligent actress who always projected warmth to any role she played. She is the whole reason for watching the film. Charlton Heston plays the awkward Casey Cole with conviction. Others in the cast include the excellent Thelma Ritter, who is a joy to watch in everything she played. Claire Trevor and William Demarest are also seen in pivotal roles.

Before the much bigger budgeted Giant came out the following year, Paramount's B picture unit producers William Pine and William Thomas gave us Lucy Gallant a thinly disguised version of the founding of Neiman-Marcus. Jane Wyman plays the title role of a woman who was stuck in a Texas oil boom town in the Thirties and got the idea that the newly oil rich Texans might like some really fashionable clothing. As she is a recently jilted bride left at the altar, Wyman sells off her considerable trousseau and with that money builds the best department store in the state with all the latest fashions from Paris and New York.

Charlton Heston has a nice part as the cattle rancher turns oil millionaire like Rock Hudson in Giant who waits for Wyman. But this is clearly Wyman's film. Her father was accused of embezzlement and committed suicide and she wants to prove as a woman she can start and maintain her own business.

Wyman and Heston got a really good supporting cast from Paramount. The Dollar Bills as Pine and Thomas were called in the industry were getting bigger and bigger budgets to work with from Paramount although nothing like what Warner Brothers did for Giant. They assembled a good supporting cast with folks like William Demarest, Thelma Ritter, Wallace Ford, Gloria Talbott, and Tom Helmore settling in parts you are accustomed to seeing them in.

One I wish had more screen time though was Claire Trevor. She plays a former honky tonk owner who sells her place to Wyman for her original store and becomes a friend and rises to be a queen of Texas society. There's just too little of Trevor in this film.

Lucy Gallant is Texas putting its best foot forward. None of the warts are shown as they are in Giant. Still the film holds up well and Dollar Bills were probably justly proud of this work.