Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Art Vandelay Any time Robert Preston shows up in a movie it's a good day. He looked good. He could act. He could sing and dance. The guy had it all. Here he plays a college-educated geologist on hand to continue the legacy of his oilman father. Except instead of being a rough-and-tumble wild- catter he's several decades ahead of the curve in wanting to extract oil sustainably. To the credit of the movie's writers Preston's character isn't some preachy enviro-tard, either. He's a nice balance to Susan Hambone's Oil Queen, whose greed is turned up to 11. The outdoor filming was refreshing. Even watching the lousy print on Silver Screen Classics you can feel that OK sun pounding down. The less said about the Indians the better. They include the stereotypical ''chief''-type with the long braids and fractured English - I mean, c'mon, the movie is set in the 1920s not the 1820s. And then there's the Indian ''sidekick'' who is actually a Mexican and talks like he's brain injured. Chill Wills is on the screen just enough not to grate on my nerves. Hayward is gorgeous but I'm sorry she can't act. Had she not died early she surely would have starred in some night-time TV soap like Falcon Crest. The finale is spectacular. Ruined only by the preachy enviro-whining epilogue. The only reason I'd watch this again is if I needed a Robert Preston fix on a slow afternoon.

Spikeopath Tulsa is directed by Stuart Heisler and adapted to screenplay by Frank S. Nugent and Curtis Kenyon from a Richard Wormser story. It stars Susan Hayward, Robert Preston, Pedro Armendáriz, Lloyd Gough and Ed Begley. Music is by Frank Skinner and cinematography by Winton C. Hoch.It's Tulsa at the start of the oil boom and when Cherokee Lansing's (Hayward) rancher father is killed in a fight, she decides to take on the Tanner Oil Company by setting up her own oil wells. But at what cost to the grazing land of the ranchers?Perfect material for Hayward to get her teeth into, Tulsa is no great movie, but it a good one. Sensible ethics battle greed and revenge as Hayward's Cherokee Lensing lands in a male dominated industry and kicks ass whilst making the boys hearts sway. She's smart, confident and ambitious, but she's too driven to see the painfully obvious pitfalls of her motives, or even what she has become. It all builds to a furious climax, where fires rage both on land and in hearts, the American dream ablaze and crumbling, the effects and model work wonderfully pleasing.Slow in parts, too melodramatic in others, but Hayward, Preston, Gough and the finale more than make this worth your time. 7/10

vincentlynch-moonoi Yes, it's true, the quality of the print seen on TCM is disgraceful. To some extent it ruins the closing minutes of the film. But, that's a not uncommon fate of the smaller production companies of the past (and after all, how familiar are you with Walter-Wanger Productions and Eagle-Lion Films. We can only hope that someday there will be a restoration of what is a darned good film.There's nothing particularly unique about the plot -- cattle rancher's father is killed by an oil rigging accident and she vows revenge. Although, we never quite understand why she ends up becoming a willing partner to the man she blames for her father's death; and that is, perhaps, the one great flaw in this film. There's the interesting sub-plot about which man will ultimately win her? The Indian (who I think most of us today would root for)? The high-minded "professor"? The man who was responsible for her father's death? It would be interesting to see how the story would be changed if it were being filmed today, instead of over 60 years ago.Susan Hayward plays Cherokee Lansing, the cattle rancher daughter who becomes an oil woman (in Oklahoma). But, in reality, Susan Hayward plays...Susan Hayward. And she (and we) can revel in that. Lest you think is this is one of her early films, no...actually her 27th credited screen appearance.I enjoyed seeing Robert Preston here as "the professor", and one of the two consciences of the cast. Pedro Armendáriz, who was actually Mexican, plays the Indian cattle rancher...the other conscience in the film. Overall a good performance, with a few missteps. I didn't care for Lloyd Gough as the heavy in the film. I'm no fan of Chill Wills, although every once in a while he would turn in a performance that I enjoyed, and this is one of those times. In fact, I wish he had had more screen time in this film. Although he doesn't get much screen time, it's interesting to see Ed Begley (senior) in a very different role for him.If we had a good print of this film, the closing scenes would be down right spectacular. With this bad print, they look cheap. But, the conflagration scenes earned the film an Oscar nomination for special effects.I recommend this film despite the poor quality of the print. Not a gem, but a rhinestone in the rough.

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.