This film has four big stars perfectly cast and appearing at their very best in a very entertaining film about "wild catting" in the American oil industry.I rated it 7/10.First up is Clark Gable playing the "mans man" role he made so famous in "Gone with the Wind".Next up is Spencer Tracy giving one of his speeches in court where he seems so comfortable, ("Judgment at Nuremburg", Cass Timberlayne" etc).Next up we have Claudette Colbert giving one of her best sympathetic "tea and sympathy" performances e.g. "Since You Went Away" and finally there is the gorgeous Hedy Lamarr playing to her strength of a sophisticated, intelligent and beautiful business associate who knows how the oil industry business is is transacted in the New York corridors of power.The film was made one year before the U.S. entered WWII so the budget could afford to be generous.Fot its day, the scenes and special effects of the oil well fire were very realistic.One reviewer remarked that Clark Gable in his youth worked on a "wild cat" oil site, if so this gave his performance added realism.What about those muddy roads.I felt like asking the town corporation to pave them over with some of that oil money flooding into the oil barons' coffers which presumably would attract some local taxation!
