mark.waltz Where were the Barnes and Ewing families of "Dallas" fame when this took place? It's the 1920's, and narrator Chill Wills explains how Tulsa became the oil capital of the world because of the conglomerate of various oil companies facing the need to be responsible for nature as well as profits. Native American Pedro Pedro Armendáriz wants to keep his property out of the hands of oil men, but childhood pal Susan Hayward (whom he secretly loves) convinces him to get involved. Along the way, Hayward falls for genealogist Robert Preston (pre-"Music Man") and keeps him guessing whether or not she'll choose him while becoming the next Alexis Carrington of her day over ruthless oilman Lloyd Gough, who could care less about the cows he kills with the oil infested waters they drink out of.Yes, this pre-cursor to the two top nighttime soaps of the 1980's (that ironically dealt with the oil industry in Dallas Texas and Denver Colorado) were when they were at their best. Hayward hit the top of the female stars in 1949 with "House of Strangers" and "My Foolish Heart", and the colorful part in "Tulsa" was a dynamic part for her. Preston plays one of his few romantic roles prior to Broadway fame, while Chill Wills offers comic relief. Ed Begley, who played a ruthless businessman in Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth", has an important bit part that moves the plot forward, and the lovable Jimmy Conlin is his sidekick. Great color photography, and a fantastic "White Heat" style ending are other pluses.

sol (Some Spoilers) It's when cattleman Neise Lansing, Harry Shannon, found his prized cows poisoned from oil emitted from a nearby oil rig belonging to Tanner Petrouloum that he threw a fit. Mindlessly charging at the rig and yelling obscenities it suddenly started gushing crude with the top platform of the oil rig dropping down to earth on Lansing's unprotected, in him not wearing a regulation hardhat, head killing him.With her father dead Mr. Lansing's red headed and hot blooded daughter Cherokee, Susan Hayward, who's also a quarter American Indian demanded that the CEO of the oil company Bruce Tanner, Lloyd Gough, pay her for her father's dead cattle who were poisoned by spillage from his oil rig. With Tanner not being too cooperative in her dispute with him Cherokee later runs into oil man John Brady, Ed Begley, who had one two many at the local saloon. Brady too drunk to know whet he's doing handed Cherokee his deed to the land that's adjacent to that of the land that native American's Charlie Lightfoot, Chief Yowlachie, and her cousin Jim Redbird, Pedro Armendariz, own. By the time the evening was over Bradly was killed in a bar brawl with him not being around to sober up and take his land deed back!Seeing her chance of getting back at Tanner by beating him at his own game, the oil business, Cherokee started to turn her sights on the oil that she knew was under the ground in the late John Brady, now her, land and went to work on it! Not getting anywhere at first it wasn't until handsome and sure of himself Princeton rock specialist Brad Bradly, Robert Preston, the late John Brady's son showed up at Cherokee's rig that things started popping! Popping so much that within the next six months some dozen oil well popped up from under Cherokee's land that no one, including oil baron Tanner, ever figured were there!It's later when Cherokee decided to drop her square and not too greedy, in not wanting to make millions by polluting the land, fiancée Brad Brady in order to go into business with Tanner as his partner in the oil business that things started to get hot and gushy in and around Tulsa! With her and Tanner having oil rigs popping up all over and polluting the grazing lands and streams outside the city. With the environmentally conscious Jim Redbird refusing to have any oil-well drilled on his land Turnner decides to have the court declare him mentally incompetent thus taking his land away from him. This leads to Jim losing it when he finds his cattle, like those of Neise Lansing's, dead from poisoned water that both Tanner's and Cherokee's oil rigs polluted.**SPOILERS*** We soon see how dangerous it was for Tanner together with his new partner Cherokee to pump the land dry of its oil with the stream that Jim's cattle drank from catch fire when Jim just lit a match and threw in it to see if there was any oil let in it. In what looked like an end of the world fire and brimstone ending both Cherokee who finally saw the light, by seeing her entire land go up in flames, and her now back again boyfriend Brad risked their lives in dynamiting the burning oil wells before they spread into Tulas itself.P.S It was that fiery incident that thought everyone involved in the oil business to cool it and not go overboard in pumping the land dry of oil when in the end there wouldn't be, due fires and pollution, any land left to pump oil out of!

whpratt1 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.

weezeralfalfa Susan Hayward and Robert Preston star in this story about a wildcat wildcatter. In my opinion, this is one of the most appropriate roles she did, considering her reported "sock it to em" personality. I don't understand why this film isn't better known and is not even mentioned in rundowns of Susan's major films. She plays the tough-as-nails Cherokee Lansing, part Native American daughter of a cattleman in the expanding oil country near Tulsa, OK, of the 1920s. She looks great, whether riding a horse around her cattle ranch or elegantly dressed in her mansion after becoming wealthy. Quite a few westerns dramatized the conflicts between cattlemen and sodbusters or between cattlemen and sheepherders in hillier terrain. This film explores the conflict between traditional cattle interests and emerging oil interests. Cherokee, herself, personifies this conflict as she transforms from an irate spokeswoman for the cattle interests into one of the leading promoters of oil interests, then backtracks, under pressure from her sometimes fiancé Brad Brady(Robert Preston) and her native American friend, Jim Redbird, to repromote a more balanced coexistence of oil and cattle interests. As often happens in such group conflict films, there is a disaster sequence, perpetrated by the established interests, to try to get rid of the invaders. In this case, it is a spectacular oil field fire, well done, although in reality, such a conflagration would have been practically impossible to extinguish with the technology of the 1920s. The perpetrator, Jim Redbird, could claim he was just trying to get rid of the oil slick that was killing his cattle, and that the fire just happened to spread to the adjacent oil field(It's not clear how?).This is at least the second film in which Susan was paired romantically with Robert Preston's character, the other being "Reap the Wild Wind". in which both die before the film is finished. Preston generally played supporting roles, often as wishy washy villains. Here, he does an excellent job as the top-billed male, Brad Brady. His relationship with his employer, Cherokee, undergoes a roller-coaster ride, starting very low and ending on a high note. The son of "Crude Oil" Johnny, who serendipitously signed his oil leases over to Cherokee just before being killed in a barroom brawl, Brady shows up unexpectedly at her drill site, fresh from a degree in petroleum engineering. He teams up with Jim Redbird in recommending a conservative approach to exploiting any oil found. In contrast, Bruce Tanner(Lloyd Gough), the reigning "oil king" of this region, wants to drill many wells and pump out the oil as fast as possible. At first, seen as an adversary by Cherokee, eventually, she agrees to cooperate and do things Tanner's way rather than Brady's way. Tanner even proposes marriage when he is thinking of running for governor, thus uniting the "oil king" and "oil queen". Jim Redbird also has romantic hopes with Cherokee. The oil field fire then becomes the focus. In the aftermath, Cherokee rethinks things and makes her final choice of policy and lover.This film invites comparisons with the previous film "Boomtown", staring Gable, Tracy, Colbert and Lamarr. They are both excellent stories in my opinion, relating to the development of oil fields and empires. Some viewers, no doubt, will strongly prefer one over the other. If you enjoyed this film, by all means check out "Boomtown" There are several obvious differences. Boomtown was shot in B&W versus Technicolor for "Tulsa". The featured wildcatters were Gable and Tracy and much of the movie deals with their up and down relationship and fortunes, somewhat similar to the up and down relationships between Cherokee and Brady, and Cherokee and Tanner, in the present film. "Boomtown" does not explore the dimension of conflict between cattlemen and oil developers. Both films end up promoting strategies for prolonged production rather than maximal short term production. They both include a spectacular oil field fire that threatens to destroy fortunes. Chill Wills, a native Oklahoman, is the only actor I know of who was in both films. In "Tulsa", he served as the occasional narrator and as a secondary acquaintance of Cherokee. He seemed to spend most of his time singing the title song "Tulsa" in a local club. Lloyd Gough serves as a charming, if sometimes double dealing, Bruce Tannner. His film career began late and was not very long.