While looking for something to watch I stumbled upon this movie. A western starring Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, and Hedy Lamarr, I thought, why have I never heard of this before? The answer, of course, is that it isn’t that good. Great movies become beloved, and bad ones are notorious, but average ones are easily forgotten.

Gable and Tracy play Big John McMasters and Square John Sand respectively, two oil wildcatters. The film starts out strong enough with both of them down on their luck, out of work, and out of money. Square John has spent his last dime on some Oklahoma land he’s just sure is full of oil, but he’s got no cash to buy the drilling equipment. Big John says he has cash and they team up together. Turns out he doesn’t really have any money but he cons the equipment from Luther Aldrich (Frank Morgan). Oil flows and the two of them are rich.

Square John has a girl, Betsy (Claudette Colbert) back home he’s been courting since he was a young buck, but he’s yet to talk her into marriage. She shows up without warning and meets Big John without either knowing who the other is. She pretty quickly figures out he’s Square John’s partner, but she finds it fun to toy with him without him knowing who she is. They talk and flirt, and fall in love. In the morning she fesses up, but admits she never really loved Square John, at least not in that way, and came all the way out to let him down gently.

Square John, for his part, takes all of this on the chin. Betsy and Big John get married and things go well. Until they don’t. She finds him in the arms of another woman, starts to leave him, but ultimately forgives him. Something Square John cannot do.

He breaks up their partnership and the rest of the film finds one of them up and the other one down, financially speaking. When one is down he wants nothing to do with the other, and vice versa.

It is here that the film falls apart for me. It goes on for far too long having one of them strike it rich and then lose everything and then the tides turn. Betsy is stuck in the middle. Hedy Lamarr eventually shows up as a woman who uses her skills and charms to basically be a corporate spy, giving Big John the scoop on what is going down in New York, and giving him the upper hand. She uses those same charms to woo him, creating yet another rift in the relationship.

I love me some Hedy Lamarr but by the time she really gets going, I was ready for the film to end. It has some really oddball things to say about love and marriage and the story just falls apart about midway through.

That’s too bad, too, because it has a great cast and that first half has a lot of promise.

The filmmaking is actually pretty great. The actors are all very good and the photography is very picturesque. There is one brilliant scene in which an oil well catches fire. The blaze is tremendous and a score of workers risk their lives to put it out It really is quite something to see.