Boom Town

This was the biggest film of the year for MGM in 1940. They used four of their biggest stars, any one of whom could have starred in their own films.

Clark Gable already had an Oscar for It Happened One Night, another nomination for Mutiny on the Bounty, and was nominated in the 1940 Academy Awards for Gone with the Wind.

Spencer Tracy, a nine-time Oscar nominee, already had a nomination for San Francisco, a win for Captains Courageous, and a win the previous year for Boy's Town.

Three-time Oscar nominee Claudette Colbert already had a win for It happened One Night, which she did with Gable, and a nomination for Private Worlds.

Frank Morgan had gotten one of his two nominations for The Affairs of Cellini.

And, our Star of the Month, Hedy Lamarr, was just beginning her career.

This was a raucous film with all the excitement that you would expect in one about wildcatters in the oil business and featured barroom fights, streets of mud, and stories ripped from the headlines. It was an amazing love story about two men in love with the same woman. It was pure entertainment.

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.

Portraying a friendship similar to the one they shared in the earlier "San Francisco," Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy play two oilmen or wildcatters in "Boom Town," an entertaining saga directed by Jack Conway. Gable is the colorful Big John McMasters, a Rhett Butler from Texas, who lives large and romances big. Tracy is the more solid, down-to-earth Jonathan Sand, who is Gable's moral conscience, much like he was in "San Francisco." The pair meet cute while heading in opposite directions on a narrow board walkway across a muddy street. Despite a damp start, the two men bond, and their friendship endures for years through fights, jealousy, and competition over business and women, particularly Claudette Colbert. The mud is barely washed off their clothing when Gable unwittingly steals Colbert from Tracy, and the jilted platonic lover carries a torch for his lost love throughout the film. When not womanizing or swindling, Gable and Tracy make and lose several fortunes separately and together without breaking a sweat. Oil gushers, well fires, and fistfights, the action wanders all over the MGM back lot from Texas to South America to New York.

Gable anchors the film with his larger-than-life personality, while Tracy underplays in deference to his more charismatic co-star. Although re-teaming the Oscar-winning leads of "It Happened One Night" must have seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, Colbert, unfortunately, often seems out of place in "Boom Town." Her manners, poise, and dress do not mesh with the Texas oil fields or the South American hovels. She is on firmer ground as the well-dressed lady of the manor. The sight of perfectly made-up Colbert scrubbing clothes on a washboard with a big grin on her face strains the story's credibility. Although the enigmatic Hedy Lamarr has a flawless face and incomparable beauty, she rarely wrinkles her professionally applied cosmetics to show any trace of an emotion. However, she is certainly believable as the object of any man's lust and physically perfect as an "other woman." Fortunately, a fine cast of supporting players, such as Frank Morgan, Chill Wills, and Lionel Atwill, surround the leading stars and further enhance the lively proceedings.

First class production values, a fast-moving story, and appealing stars make "Boom Town" a solid entertainment, if not a masterpiece.

My mother grew up in the East Texas oil boom in 1935. This film closely resembles Kilgore Texas. My whole family has been in the business since the early 40's. My father was burned in an oil field explosion and recovered. The film was done well, showing all of the hard work men endured in the fields. This movie is true and correct showing the hardships of the life in the business, from being dirt poor to having the finer things in life. All of the actor's in this movie closely resemble people we have dealt with over the years. I also enjoyed seeing this move in black and white as it focused on the story line rather than a big color feature. I will definitely watch this move again as it brings home the people that risked there lives to bring a product to the people at the beginning of the industrial age with romance and a little humor. I would recommend it to anyone.

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.