Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) is in love with the idea of the West. He leaves his Wichita home to travel to the Oklahoma Territory for a land rush, only to be beaten out on the best parcel by a young woman (Estelle Taylor). Undefeated, he moves his family to the boomtown of Osage and starts a newspaper, but the call of the West reaches out and he leaves his wife, Sabra (Irene Dunne) to manage things on her own, showing up from time to time like a stray cat.
This was a major epic back in the day. It cost a fortune during the Great Depression and won three Oscars, including Best Picture. Now, it's mostly just an artifact of a bygone era. The characterizations are melodramatic, the pacing is laggy, and the tone is rhapsodic over a past that never existed. It would, however, make a decent double feature with Killers of the Flower Moon if you want to see the other side of this story, which glosses over the atrocities with barely a blip. Dix overacts like hell, swaggering around in the shiniest boots and looking like a parody of a silent film star. Dunne is the real hero here, holding down a throughline of plot that meanders terribly. At two hours and three minutes long, it's not a jaunt, and I don't think anyone but the most hardened of Oscar nerds are going to find it worth it. But it is in the public domain as of January this year, so it is free if you do want to watch it. There's a couple of versions on YouTube and the whole thing is actually embedded in the Wikipedia article for the movie.
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