Tulsa

No need to repeat the plot. Darn few actresses can dominate a "man's picture" like Tulsa the way Susan Hayward does. What an exceptional combination of beauty and boldness she was. The production values of this non-studio project are unusually well targeted. Without them, the movie would be little more than a good programmer instead of the sleeper it is. Credit those values (special effects, location shooting, etc.) to producer Walter Wanger, who proved he had an eye for quality material, both big budget and small, e.g. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Credit too, under-rated director Stuart Heisler with a sense of pacing and an ability to redeem difficult material with intelligent touches, e.g. Beachhead (1954), Storm Warning (1951), etc.

I especially like the nightmare montage of Redbird's (Armendariz) after he's set fire to the wells. Up to that point, the derricks have been portrayed as stately umbilical cords of wealth and progress, the life's blood of the city and state. So it's a surprise to see them suddenly depicted as hulking black monsters threatening everything around them. Contrast that dark depiction with the uncritically sunny, yet thematically similar, mega-hit Giant (1956). It doesn't take much extrapolation to update Redbird's vision to the oil-based crisis of today; at the same time, the values that evolve among the movie's characters show a surprising sensitivity to the need for a sustainable environment.

I also like the way Indian Charlie Lightfoot (Yowlatchie) is shown as excelling at white man ways by becoming a shrewd businessman. Too often Hollywood portrayed Indians at extremes, either as bloodthirsty savages or as noble primitives, but rarely as 3-dimensional human beings. The screenplay may pander at times, especially with Pinky (Wills), but it's also unusually well-rounded for its period. I guess my only reservation is with the splendid special effects. Those burning oil fields are just so incredibly hot, it's impossible to see Brady (Preston) enter the inferno with little more than a squirt of water. Nonetheless, in my little book, the movie is a definite sleeper. True, as the lovelorn outsider, Pedro Armendariz is no quirky James Dean. Yet, despite its relative obscurity, Tulsa is as well-acted and carries as much depth as its sprawling, better-known counterpart, Giant.

Susan Hayward doesn't back down when it comes to protecting what is hers. Her character is embroiled in the early wars between wildcat oil drillers and cattle ranchers in Oklahoma. A pretty fast paced movie that stays busy. The oil field fire is a tremendous sight. Chill Wills, Robert Preston and Ed Begley round out the super cast.

This film took me by complete surprise with great acting by veteran actors, Susan Hayward, (Cherokee Lansing) and Robert Preston, (Brad Brady). The film starts out with Cherokee and her father who raise cattle on their ranches in Tulsa, Oklahoma and one day they find all their cattle dying along a stream of water and as they smell the water, they realize the oil refining business was contaminating the soil and killing the cattle. Cherokee goes with her father to tell them about what their oil business is doing to their cattle and while they are talking, an oil structure struck oil and a large part of a building fell on her father and killed him. It was from this point in the film when Cherokee Lansing decided to get revenge for her father's death and declares war on the oil men and their owners. There is plenty of action and even some romance. There is great photography of a fire burning through an oil field and people risking their lives in order to save their oil fields and friends and family.

In the early 1920's there was the inevitable clash between the cattle ranchers and the burgeoning oil drillers in Oklahoma. This account of that clash, filmed in color, is fast moving and interesting. It revolves around Susan Hayward's character, and Hayward is marvelous as always, and how she has to learn to adapt to the inevitable changes being wrought by the explosion of oil money. The climactic oil field fire is well done indeed. Recommended.

Let me get down to the story immediately...

It's 1920s Oklahoma, and the oil wells are...well, gushing. A young woman, orphaned when such a rig kills her cattle baron dad, sets out to get revenge on the oil owners but, instead, eventually winds up to be an oil baron herself. In the process, Cherokee Lansing (Susan Hayward) has three men vying for her affection: Brad Brady (Robert Preston), Bruce Tanner (Lloyd Gough), and Jim Redbird (Pedro Armendariz).

It's a well-photographed narrative, the special effects (for 1949) are very realistic, the acting is adequate (Susan Hayward shines, in my opinion) and the overall result is for a quite entertaining movie coupled with a glimpse into the recent past when the oil business was booming. And, I was glad to see Chill Wills again, who always gives a competent performance and who adds the requisite humour to an otherwise deadly serious affair...

The finale, showing one of the oil fields going up in flames, is quite a spectacle.

But this is more than an adventure movie about the oil business. It's also a politically correct conservation statement by Hollywood in response to the rapacious greed with which land was appropriated to feed awakening American industry. This, in 1949 – long before anybody started to think about peak oil, and the looming crisis that will come when the oil runs dry globally! Now that took guts…and a lot of money. Which makes me wonder how well this film did at the box office in 1949/1950...

So, I was amazed – even astounded – that Hollywood dared to take on the oil business then, so soon after the Second World War. Now that the predictions in that film are coming true, I think everybody should see this film. Might wake up a few more people about the coming end of the oil world as we know it...

Highly recommended. Get a copy and see it. Today, already!