Cimarron (1931)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Wesley Ruggles

Writers:

Edna Ferber (novel)
Howard Estabrook (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

9 February 1931 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Western

Tagline:

World's Mightiest Show!

Plot:

A newspaper editor settles in an Oklahoma boom town with his reluctant wife at the end of the nineteenth century.

Plot Keywords:

Oklahoma | Newspaper | Frontier | Land Rush | Newspaper Editor

Awards:

Won 3 Oscars. Another 1 win & 4 nominations

Cast

Richard Dix	...	Yancey Cravat
Irene Dunne	...	Sabra Cravat
Estelle Taylor	...	Dixie Lee
Nance O'Neil	...	Felice Venable
William Collier Jr.	...	The Kid
Roscoe Ates	...	Jesse Rickey (as Rosco Ates)
George E. Stone	...	Sol Levy
Stanley Fields	...	Lon Yountis
Robert McWade	...	Louis Hefner
Edna May Oliver	...	Mrs. Tracy Wyatt
Judith Barrett	...	Donna Cravat (as Nancy Dover)
Eugene Jackson	...	Isaiah

Runtime:

131 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Photophone System)

Filming Locations:

Jasmin Quinn Ranch, near, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

The only internally-produced RKO film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) (AA: Best Picture, 1946) was a Samuel Goldwyn production distributed by RKO.

Quotes:

Sol Levy: They will always talk about Yancy. He's gonna be part of the history of the great Southwest. It's men like him that build the world. The rest of them, like me... why, we just come along and live in it.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008) (TV)

Catching Up with 1931's Best Picture of the Year Oscar Winner!

Out of sight for decades, Radio Pictures' 1931 Academy Award winner was supposed to be reissued in 1951 after RKO Radio had their extremely successful reissue of KING KONG. It never happened. Not until VHS came along. We finally watched it tonight, and it holds up well.

Covering primarily one man's journey from the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1886 and continuing through the Oklahoma Oil Rush of 1907 and on to 1927 when they had automobiles and streetcars, CIMARRON cuts a wide sweep. The amazing thing to watch is that all the actors and actresses are just like real people and at no time appear like actors speaking dialog over-and-over-till-they-get-it-right. CIMARRON is like a real trip to Oklahoma a hundred years ago.

I recommend this movie as a must-see for classic movie fans; as I dis-recommend the 1960 MGM remake - an awful misfire that was extremely irritating to watch. If you ever saw John Wayne in THE BIG TRAIL you have some idea of the realistic approach to the 1931 CIMARRON.