War of the Wildcats Blu-ray Review
Thar's oil in them thar hills.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 28, 2013
It couldn't exactly be called a gusher, but at least a trickle of films appeared in the 1940s that had oil at the center of their
plots. Probably the best remembered of these is the 1940 M-G-M adventure outing
Boom Town which starred
Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy which proved to be one of that year's most popular films. Actually opening the very same
week that
Boom Town did was a less well known Warner Brothers potboiler called
Flowing Gold starring
John Garfield, Frances Farmer and Pat O'Brien, which for whatever reason didn't attract the attention of
Boom
Town but which did surprisingly well for Warner nonetheless. Leave it to Republic Pictures to get to the party a little
late, for it wasn't until 1943 that
In Old Oklahoma (retitled
War of the Wildcats for its re-release) appeared,
rather clumsily melding an oil drilling scenario onto a more traditional western setup (both
Boom Town and
Flowing Gold had featured "contemporary" timeframes). Perhaps rather surprisingly
War of the Wildcats is
played for laughs, at least some of the time, and John Wayne segues quite well between these elements and his more
traditional milieu of a rootin' tootin' guns a-blazin' hero. While
War of the Wildcats has little of the gloss and
glamour of
Boom Town (or even
Flowing Gold, for that matter), it's enjoyable in its own small scale way,
with a colorful supporting cast and enough general mayhem erupting at regular intervals to keep action fans reasonably
engaged.
John Wayne is so associated with Western or other action roles that it's sometimes hard to remember he could do
rather
well in other types of roles, given good writing and directing as well as a game supporting cast.
War of the
Wildcats shows Wayne off at his most charming, with a surprisingly deft light comedy edge running through quite a
bit
of his performance. Wayne portrays Dan Somers, a strapping cowboy (you expected anything less?) who kind of
stumbles
into the oil business. We meet Dan when he kind of "crashes" a private train car owned by oil tycoon Jim Gardner
(Albert
Dekker), an impresario who just turned a perhaps lecherous eye toward Catherine Allen (Martha Scott), a would be
writer
who has just been more or less run out of town by a mob of outraged older women who can't quite believe a female
could
have written a "scandalous" romance novel.
Gardner convinces Catherine to tag along to Gardner's self built town of Sapulpa since Catherine, a burgeoning
women's
libber decades before that idea was ever officially formulated, is out to storm the "man's world" an experience
something
of life. Of course, Dan ends up tagging along, quickly becoming aware that many residents of Sapulpa are less than
thrilled with Gardner's business tactics in monopolizing the oil reserves around the town. Dan of course is right there to
pick up the slack and immediately become Gardner's rival in business
and love. He also becomes a stalwart
defender of the local Native American population as well as perhaps unlikely former friend of President Teddy
Roosevelt's.
War of the Wildcats is a fairly routine programmer, but it's quite lively and has some great performances.
Martha Scott burst upon the scene (culling a Best Actress Academy Award nomination in the process) in Thornton
Wilder's
Our Town, but she too frequently was cast in supporting roles where her inherent spunk and vivacity
wasn't as readily apparent. Luckily that's not the case in
War of the Wildcats, and she creates a really
wonderfully boisterous character who might be a bit on the pushy side but who is also quite easy to love, something
that makes the incipient love triangle which develops between Catherine, Dan and Gardner all the more believable.
Albert Dekker was an actor who, somewhat similarly to Scott, too infrequently got to really strut his stuff in major roles.
Dekker had an intriguing career and an even more intriguing death. While his years at Paramount were filled with often
pretty turgid roles, he occasionally got great little films like
Dr. Cyclops. Dekker tended to get cast in suave
villain roles, with his turn in
The Killers being one of his best remembered. Dekker served in the California State
Assembly where his left leaning politics and disparagement of the anti-Communist crusades then in vogue quickly got
him blacklisted. Dekker returned to his stage roots and achieved renown as Lee J. Cobb's replacement as Willy Loman
in Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman. Dekker was found handcuffed and hanged in his bathtub in the late
sixties, in some accounts naked and in others wearing at least some women's clothing, with some other odd elements
found at the scene which have led some to claim the actor was murdered and did not commit suicide as the official
report declares. His role here is relatively nuanced. Gardner isn't and out and out hiss worth villain, and in fact is
rather charming in his own overbearing way, something that makes Catherine's indecision about which man she wants
to end up with at least
somewhat believable.
Also in
War of the Wildcats are the always enjoyable Gabby Hayes as Dan's comedy relief sidekick as well as
future Mrs. Roy Rogers Dale Evans as a dance hall singer. Evans, another would be star who got sidelined in routine
supporting roles, gets to sing and dance here and shows what a winning screen presence she could be given the right
circumstances.
War of the Wildcats is one of those midline films that never really approaches greatness but
which manages to effortlessly entertain, buoyed by some ebullient performances which help knit together some
otherwise disparate plot elements.
