Gold Is Where You Find It

I generally agree with the majority of my fellow IMDBers that in their understandable zeal to tell a late Depression era, populist story where the villain is Big Mining (as personified by Barton MacLane and Sidney Toler) scenarists Robert Buckner and Warren Duff forgot to make their characters interesting. The result is fairly long stretches of boredom involving a really dull love story between George Brent and Olivia DeHavilland and a tepid father/son conflict between Claude Raines and eternal spoiled brat Tim Holt. The movie does come alive at certain points. Michael Curtiz is too good an action director for it not to. I love the denouement with the evil hydraulic miners drowning in their own watery muck. Truly an ending that would have pleased Frank Norris. But in general this is pretty much low grade schlock. And can we please lose the gratuitous racism, please? Solid C.

A mining engineer, caught between a mighty gold syndicate and a group of stubborn ranchers, learns that GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT when he meets the beautiful daughter of a powerful landowner.

Warner Brothers had great hopes for this lavish Western, and the money that was spent certainly shows up on the screen. Unfortunately, the romantic attraction between stars George Brent & Olivia de Havilland never catches fire. This is largely the fault of the script, which seems strangely aloof from their involvement and makes their love scenes rather pedestrian. Alas, real life can be much the same way...

In this case it is important to look at what strengths the film possesses. Chief among these is master actor Claude Rains, in a suave performance as Olivia's determined, courageous father. With his rich, silken voice, he could have simply read the script directly into the camera and made it compelling. Always a treat to watch & listen to, the movie is fortunate to have him.

Good support is given by young Tim Holt as Rains' amiable, tragic son; Harry Davenport as a friendly old doctor; Gabby Hayes & Willie Best as employees of Rains; and Sidney Toler & Barton MacLane as the murderous syndicate president and mine foreman.

The Technicolor photography - still rare & wonderful in 1938 - is pleasant on the eyes. The massed attack on the mine is well handled & exciting.

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Viewers of the film are likely to hear more about hydraulic gold mining than they ever knew before. Indeed, the environmental problems which the film depicts, with the immense runoff fouling the downstream waters & farmlands, are quite accurately depicted.

The Golden Moon Mine in the movie could have easily been based, in part, on the great Cherokee Mine in Northern California's Butte County. Located at the base of Table Mountain, between the towns of Chico & Oroville, the Cherokee Mine attracted Argonauts from around the world (as its cemetery still attests) and became the largest hydraulic mining enterprise on earth. Nearby Butte Creek was dammed to provide a 300 acre supply of water for the Mine (three smaller reservoirs were also created). Over 100 miles of conveyance were constructed to move the water to the Mine, where each day forty million gallons were needed for the eighteen immense monitors which directed their gush at the side of the Mountain. Sluices nine miles in length were ready to catch the particles of gold washed down from the bluff. In its few years of operation - 1880 until 1887 - two and a half million dollars worth of gold was found, as well as small amounts of platinum, topaz and even diamonds. Eventually the gold played out and the Mine was no longer cost effective to remain open. To this day, the scars still remain on the side of Table Mountain as mute witness to one of the engineering marvels of the 19th Century.

I rarely say this, but this film would have been much, much better if the very quickly spoken narration at the beginning of the film was removed or done better. In fact, the first time I tried to watch this film, I turned it off due to the horrid introduction. Likewise, the ending narration and its amazing sappiness would also be best if it were removed altogether. These sickeningly preachy bookends to the movie really take what is a decent film and sink it.

The film itself is actually based on real events. It seems that in the 1870s and 80s, hydraulic mining was literally blowing hilltops off in order to extract gold. Using high pressure hoses, the ground was washed away--often flooding the farms in the valleys with sediment or water. For more about this, do a Google search--I found it all moderately interesting. The famous Edwards Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company case decided the legality of a company basically destroying the surrounding area to extract gold or other precious metals.

The first thing that you'll probably notice about the film, other than the horrible opening narration, is the garish color. The print shown on Turner Classic Movies is usually the best available, so I assume no pristine prints survive. Instead, the colors are very gaudy and rather gross. See the film and you'll know what I mean. Despite being made by Warner Brothers, who also made amazingly beautiful color films during this era (such as THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD and THE SEA HAWK), this Technicolor just looks yecchy--probably due to the ravages of time. It could use a restoration to sharpen the picture as well.

The film is made up of two camps--the farmers (represented by Claude Rains and his friends) and the miners (represented by the likes of Sidney Toler). Rains' side is obviously in the right--the miners are creating an environmental disaster area and have no regard for the financial damages they are causing the farmers. However, nice guy George Brent still works for the mine, as he runs one of the three mines in the area. How he is able to justify the mine owners' actions AND try to be friends with Rains and his family (including his practically perfect daughter who any man in the film or audience would adore, Olivia de Havilland) is sure tricky. However, over time, the mine owners' tactics get worse and ultimately it's all heading for a big showdown--either in the courts, in all-out war or both.

The film has a really nice cast--with lots of fine actors. In addition to Rains, Toler, Brent and de Havilland, there is a long list of character actors who make the film worth seeing. George Hayes (in an appearance just before he became known in the credits as "Gabby"), Tim Holt, Henry Davenport, Barton MacLane, Henry O'Neill, Willie Best (in a role that does not cast him as an idiot, thank goodness) and Russell Simpson (among others) may not be household names, but for old movie nuts like myself, they are familiar friends.

Overall, the film is educational and entertaining--but also a bit predictable and formulaic. But, if you can somehow ignore the start and finish, you may find like I did that the film IS worth seeing.

Not much distinction to this routine western, aside from the fact that it introduced Olivia de Havilland to the screen for the first time in technicolor. Unfortunately, neither her role nor the film itself are ever able to rise above the routine dimensions of a weak script. George Brent stars as the miner in conflict with de Havilland's rancher father Claude Rains.

It takes place in the 1870s and has a narration at the beginning and end that tells us this was meant to be an important little "epic" for the Warner studio. Despite some solid scenes of mining operations and an agreeable enough cast that includes Tim Holt (as de Havilland's brother), Margaret Lindsay and Sidney Toler (before his Charlie Chan days), the story itself is a weakness guaranteed to produce yawns long before the rambling tale reaches an action-filled finish. But by then, you're not likely to be paying too much attention.

Of all of the early ingenue roles de Havilland had at Warner Bros., this is definitely one of her weakest. It seems that when she wasn't playing opposite Flynn, she had no real leading man. Charisma between her and Brent is sorely lacking.

You've seen this picture before - with a different title and a different cast. It's the one about two warring factions (here, miners and wheat growers) battling over precious land while she (Olivia deHavilland, daughter of the most prominent wheat grower) and he (George Brent, employed by the mining syndicate) fall in love. All very conventional, despite a solid cast and first-rate production values.

Clumsy off-screen narration at both the beginning and end attempts to give this story a documentary feel and some measure of historical significance. Did the film makers tack this on because they felt the story lacked significance and originality? I did.