Roughnecks and Wildcats

Boom Town (1940) is a pleasant old movie, with battling co-stars Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, plus Claudette Colbert and a pinch of Hedy Lamarr.

It starts in an oil boom town in Texas. The town is a mud pit, with horses mired up to their withers in the streets, and a guy who will lower a plank walkway for two bits so you can cross the street dry. Gable and Tracy meet up in the middle of the walkway - neither will give way, so they both end up in the mud. And so they become friends.

Gable is a bit of a playboy, palling around with chorus girl Whitey (platinum blonde Marion Martin), while Tracy can only talk about his girl back home. As wildcatters, they borrow/steal some equipment from Frank Morgan and - go bust. But they finally make a strike and pay back Morgan, as well as making him their partner.

One day, Claudette Colbert pulls into town and she and Tracy start flirting. But it turns out she is Tracy's girl, the one he is true and loyal to. The problem is, she doesn't feel the same way.

So Tracy does the right thing and steps back, letting Gable get the girl. But he does dissolve the partnership. They flip a coin for control of the company and Gable loses, putting him back on the skids. But Colbert doesn't mind - she doesn't want money, she wants her man.

And so it goes, back and forth, one ex-friend up, one down. Colbert doesn't like the way Gable looks at outside women, and Tracy doesn't like that, either, but through it all, Colbert stays loyal to Gable and Tracy stays loyal to Colbert.

When he gets rich, Gable moves to the city and hires Hedy Lamarr to be his Mata Hari industrial spy - and maybe more. To take her out of circulation, Tracy tries to get Lamarr to marry him, to protect Colbert. But she's too smart for that.

And that's the movie, except when Tracy gets Gable brought up on anti-trust charges and then gets him off. Because vertical monopolists are heroes, damnit! It's rather sweet, Tracy's unwavering love for Colbert, and her devotion to Gable (and Gable's to her, in his own way). Gable and Tracy are great - it seems that Gable actually worked in the oil fields. Colbert is wonderful, but I'm not sure this is the role for her. She's a bit to high-class to be Tracy's childhood sweetheart. Lamarr is quite slinky, and not evil at all, which is nice.

It has a sort of happy ending too.