Tonight's Movie: The Oklahoma Kid (1939)

This weekend I watched James Cagney as THE OKLAHOMA KID (1939) for the first time.

It was particularly appropriate viewing, as on Saturday I visited Iverson Movie Ranch, where sections of the movie were filmed.

By coincidence it also worked out that on the same day I visited the gravesite of the film's leading lady, singer-actress Rosemary Lane, at Forest Lawn Glendale. Viewing the movie thus tied together both of Saturday's day trip locations.

It's common for some folks to make fun of THE OKLAHOMA KID, inasmuch as stars Cagney and Humphrey Bogart were more commonly seen in gangster pictures in that era. I'm happy to say I had no issue with the casting whatsoever; good actors are good actors.

Cagney may not be the first person one thinks of to be riding a horse -- indeed, there's a very obvious stunt double making a running leap for his horse at one point -- but he's as compelling as usual; Bogart, dressed all in black, is a bone-chillingly cold villain. There's not a whole lot of difference, when one thinks about it, between a '20s or '30s era gangster and someone who takes over a frontier town's gambling establishment.

The Oklahoma Kid was born Jim Kincaid; he's had a wild life and is estranged from his father (Hugh Sothern) and brother (Harvey Stephens), who are trying to bring law and order to the newly formed town of Tulsa.

Stagecoach robber Whip McCord (Bogart) is a crook through and through; he stakes a crooked claim during a land rush as blackmail to ensure he receives control of the new town's saloons.

McCord eventually plots to have the senior Kincaid framed for murder and lures the honest judge (Donald Crisp) out of town on a pretext in order to form a kangaroo court, followed by a hanging. The judge's daughter Jane (Lane), who's sweet on Jim, finds out and warns Jim, who gets the judge back to town, but to no avail. His father has been lynched.

And so Jim methodically goes about tracking down the men responsible, one after the other after the other...

This 85-minute film is a nicely paced Western with some good action scenes, including the final shootout. The movie doesn't break any new ground, but its familiar type of Western story works to the film's benefit as "movie comfort food," and I thought it was a solid piece of entertainment.

The cast, which also includes Ward Bond as Bogart's top henchman, is a good one, and there's a nice amount of outdoor shooting, filmed in black and white by filmed by James Wong Howe. Lloyd Bacon directed, and the score was by Max Steiner.

THE OKLAHOMA KID is available on DVD from the Warner Archive Collection, which first released the movie in 2014. The print is fairly scratched-up in places, but on the whole it's decent and certainly quite viewable. The disc includes the movie trailer.

THE OKLAHOMA KID also had a VHS release in 2000.

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