Boom Town (1940)

A love triangle (maybe even four-sided) develops between two reluctant wildcat oil partners, who team up, then separate, then back again in this rags to riches and back again story.

Spencer Tracy is pining for Claudette Colbert back home; but when she shows up looking for him she instantly marries Clark Gable instead, as she wasn’t really in love with Tracy to begin with.

As result Tracy’s heart is broken and still he stands by his friends; but when Gable is busted with the local ‘saloon girl’ (to put it mildly) it’s too much for him and Tracy splits the partnership (but flips for and gets to keep the business).

Colbert almost splits as well but, last minute, goes back to Gable.

Years go by and Gable is now doing well; Tracy, not so much.

They partner again; and when it seems that Gable is straying again, this time with a smoking-hot Hedy Lamarr (she never looked better!) it’s again too much for Tracy, and he schemes to ruin Gable forcing him to either give up Lamarr or Colbert (the plan is not very clear, but this part somehow still works, the other part, not so much.)

After Gable is accused of attempting to monopolize the oil industry Tracy sticks up for him (with a silly speech about his supposed patriotism) allowing wounds to heal once again and all four partners (add Frank Morgan to the mix) walk arm in arm into a bright, shining, American future.

It was fun for me seeing this wooden-building, muddy-street movie which is about as close as I’ve seen to matching my great-grandfather’s boom town story (which I’ve recently researched) as I am likely to see. He invested in gold mines, not oil; but he was also more of a pioneer than any one of these folks: He, along with a small group of other businessmen, got to found a border town.

Boom Town is identified as a Western, but if such it must be considered a rather late Western. I guess these folks are still pioneers, at least in the oil industry; and the film is very much the American Myth of the self-made man (amazingly, these folks get several do-overs, always resulting in great success by the end.)

The love story is a bit silly with Tracy playing the suffering-in-silence lover, Colbert as the wronged wife, and Gable as the clueless ladies’ man, but there is a nice moment of excitement as one of the oil wells catches fire and must be put out.

Also with Lionel Atwill, and Chill Wills.