Cimarron (1931)

Cimarron was released in 1931 and based on the 1929 bestseller by Edna Ferber . Richard Dix stars as Yancy Cravat, based on the real life Temple Houston, son of Sam Houston. Temple was a lawyer in Woodward, OK, from 1894 to his death in 1905, and a couple of moments in the movie draw on Temple's court room style. During his defense of soiled dove Dixie Lee — a prostitute named Minnie Stacey in real life — Yancy says of his trial opponent, "Your honor, the prosecutor is the first man that I've ever seen that can strut while sitting down." His closing argument to the jury is also taken from Temple's defense of Minnie Stacey in 1899.

It's too bad Cimarron doesn't depict my favorite Temple Houston anecdote, as retold in Glenn Shirley's fine biography of the man . Once, Temple asked to use the judge's chamber as a place he and his client could talk in private. The request was granted but, after lawyer and client failed to reappear in court in a reasonable amount of time, Temple was discovered sitting alone in the room with the window wide open. "I gave him the best advice I could," Houston quipped.

Okay, all this is fun but it only comments on the movie by pointing out that much of the characterization, plot, and background are drawn from times that had passed only 30 years before the film was made. The filming of Cimarron
is much closer in time to the great Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 than it is to us today and most of the pleasure the movie delivers is due to its authenticity.

The Internet Movie Database reports that the land rush scene took a week to film, using 5,000 extras, 28 cameramen, 6 still photographers and 27 camera assistants. It holds up beautifully today and if young people watching the movie think they're seeing newsreel footage of the actual event, it's almost understandable.

The picture follows footloose Yancy and his bride Sabra (the always luminous Irene Dunne) as they travel west so Yancy can set up a newspaper and practice law. They arrive first in the bustling frontier city of Osage, one of those Insta-Cities that popped up out of the prairie after the first land run.

These early scenes in Osage are fascinating in their depiction of the noise, confusion and crowded conditions. We meet many of the human types who made the run—good guys and bad guys—but most prominently for dramatic purposes a Jewish peddler (George E. Stone, who sandwiched this picture in between Little Caesar and The Front Page), a stammering printer's devil (Roscoe Ates, perhaps best remembered as either "Soapy" Jones, Eddie Dean's sidekick in a series of B-westerns, or as the husband of one of the Hilton sisters in Freaks), and a young African-American boy, Isaiah (Eugene Jackson, Pineapple in the Our Gang series), who the Cravats discover stowed away in their wagon.

Yancy and Isaiah share a moment that is both historically interesting and charged with sentiment. Yancy and Sabra are on their way to church when they find that Isaiah is tagging along behind them and looking as Sunday-go-to-meeting as he can. The Cravats know that the congregation will not allow the youngster to enter the church, so Yancy asks a favor of him. He tells Isaiah that he'd really appreciate it if his young friend would stay behind and guard the house from potential robbers. Isaiah is proud that this father figure would entrust him with such responsibility. It's a scene that plays with the overriding racism of the frontier—and the early 1930s—and not being torn between the bigotry and the kindness of Yancy is difficult.

The movie lets us know that yonderin' fellas like Yancy, who took their brains and skills from one frontier outpost to the next, were what the west needed if it ever hoped to settle down. The tragedy for civilizers like Yancy was that they couldn't feel at home when civilization did grow roots, and they were doomed from the start to run out of room and out of time. The new state they created didn't need roughnecks and pioneers.

Cimarron was the first western to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Dix and Dunne were both nominated for Oscars, but neither took one home. About a lot of older movies you say metaphorically, "Well, that one is just an historical document," but Cimarron is special because it actually is an historical document.

Oh, and one more note about something that is neither here nor there. Sabra Cravat's mother, featured in one early scene in the movie, is played by a stage actress named Nance O'Neil. If you've ever heard of her, it probably isn't in connection with her career as an actress but for the fact that during the early 20th Century she was the best friend of the infamous Lizzie Borden. Were they really, as some folks claim, lovers? Don't axe, don't tell.

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