CIMARRON
DIRECTED & PRODUCED BY WESLEY RUGGLES
MUSIC BY MAX STEINER
RKO RADIO PICTURES
INFORMATION FROM IMDb
Plot Summary
When the government opens up the Oklahoma territory for settlement,
restless Yancey Cravat claims a plot of the free land for himself
and moves his family there from Wichita.
A newspaperman, lawyer, and just about everything else,
Cravat soon becomes a leading citizen of the boom town of Osage.
Once the town is established, however, he begins to feel confined once again,
and heads for the Cherokee Strip, leaving his family behind.
During this and other absences, his wife Sabra must learn to take care of herself
and soon becomes prominent in her own right.
Written by George S. Davis
Cast
Richard Dix ... Yancey Cravat
Irene Dunne ... Sabra Cravat
Estelle Taylor ... Dixie Lee
Nance O'Neil ... Felice Venable
William Collier Jr. ... The Kid
Roscoe Ates ... Jesse Rickey (as Rosco Ates)
George E. Stone ... Sol Levy
Stanley Fields ... Lon Yountis
Robert McWade ... Louis Hefner
Edna May Oliver ... Mrs. Tracy Wyatt
Judith Barrett ... Donna Cravat (as Nancy Dover)
Eugene Jackson ... Isaiah
Alice Adair ... (uncredited)
Max Barwyn ... Sabra's Luncheon Greeter (uncredited)
Frank Beal ... Louis Venable (uncredited)
Tyrone Brereton ... Dabney Venable (uncredited)
Dolores Brown ... Adult Ruby Big Elk (uncredited)
Frederick Burt ... (uncredited)
William P. Burt ... (uncredited)
Lois Jane Campbell ... Felice Venable, Jr. (uncredited)
Nino Cochise ... (uncredited)
Heinie Conklin ... (uncredited)
Nell Craig ... Arminta Greenwood (uncredited)
Frank Darien ... Mr. Bixby (uncredited)
Kay Deslys ... (uncredited)
Don Dillaway ... Adult Cim (uncredited)
William Elmer ... (uncredited)
Edith Fellows ... (uncredited)
Mildred Frizelle ... (uncredited)
Barney Furey ... (uncredited)
Otto Hoffman ... Murch Rankin (uncredited)
Harry Holden ... (uncredited)
Clara Hunt ... Indian Girl (uncredited)
William Janney ... Man Phoning Ambulance (uncredited)
Junior Johnson ... Child Cim (uncredited)
Bob Kortman ... Killer (uncredited)
Frank Lackteen ... Man Warning Yountis (uncredited)
Ethan Laidlaw ... (uncredited)
Lillian Lane ... Bella (uncredited)
Ann Lee Ann Lee ... Aunt Cassandra (uncredited)
Jack Leonard ... (uncredited)
Walter P. Lewis ... (uncredited)
George Lollier ... (uncredited)
Timothy J. Lonergan ... (uncredited)
Robert McKenzie ... Pat Leary (uncredited)
Lew Meehan ... Gossipy Townsman (uncredited)
Billy Mellman ... Minor Role (uncredited)
Marion Mirsch ... (uncredited)
Dennis O'Keefe ... (uncredited)
William Orlamond ... Grat Gotch (uncredited)
Helen Parrish ... Young Donna (uncredited)
Dorothy Raye ... (uncredited)
Henry Roquemore Henry Roquemore ... Jouett Goforth (uncredited)
Apache Bill Russell ... (uncredited)
Douglas Scott ... Toddler Cim (uncredited)
Reginald Scott ... Yancey Jr. (uncredited)
Dorothy Simms ... (uncredited)
Carl Stockdale ... (uncredited)
Reggie Streeter ... Yancey Jr (uncredited)
Helen Trask ... (uncredited)
Gloria Vonic ... Young Ruby Big Elk (uncredited)
Ford West ... (uncredited)
Lillian West ... (uncredited)
Leo Willis ... (uncredited)
Produced
William LeBaron ... producer
Wesley Ruggles ... producer
Louis Sarecky ... associate producer
Music
Max Steiner ... (uncredited)
Directed
Wesley Ruggles ... (uncredited)
Writing Credits
Edna Ferber ... (novel)
Howard Estabrook ... (screen version) (screen version) (dialogue)
Louis Sarecky ... (contributing writer) (uncredited)
Cinematography
Edward Cronjager ... (photographed by)
Trivia
This film has the lowest IMDb rating of all Best Picture Oscar winners as of December 2016 (6.0),
along with Cavalcade (1933).
The first Western to win an Oscar and the first Western to win a Best Picture Oscar.
It would be another 59 years before a Western would win the
Academy Award for Best Picture again when Dances with Wolves (1990) took the main prize.
The land rush scene took a week to film, using 5,000 extras, 28 cameramen,
6 still photographers and 27 camera assistants.
The first film to receive more than six Academy Award nominations.
Arguably the only winner of the Best Picture Oscar to lose money during its initial release.
The film received excellent critical reviews,
but its initial financial failure was blamed on its being released
during one of the darkest periods of the Great Depression.
The first film to be nominated for every major Academy Award, including Best Picture.
The only internally-produced RKO film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar.
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) (AA: Best Picture, 1946)
was a Samuel Goldwyn production distributed by RKO.
One of the extras was Nino Cochise, the actual grandson of the great Chiricahua chief Cochise.
He and his good friend Apache Bill Russell were in this movie as well as several others.
RKO's most expensive film until Gunga Din (1939).
The movie lost $565,000 on a budget of $1.433 million.
It was re-released in 1935 and the red ink mostly disappeared off RKO's books.
Yancey Cravat, the character played by Richard Dix,
was based on real-life lawyer and gunfighter Temple Houston -
the son of Sam Houston, whom Dix played in Man of Conquest (1939)
and upon whom the 1960s western TV series Temple Houston (1963) was based.
A then-record $125,000 was paid for the film rights to the novel.
The second most popular movie at the US box office for 1931.
According to Anthony Holden's book "Behind the Oscar" (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993),
R.K.O. lost $5.5 million (approximately $58 million in 2003 dollars,
when factoring in inflation) on the movie despite its winning a Best Picture Academy Award.
Goofs
Anachronisms
During the period of the film set in 1907,
Yancey is the Progressive Party's candidate for governor of Oklahoma.
The Progressive Party did not form until 1912,
and then disbanded after Theodore Roosevelt's unsuccessful third party candidacy that year.
Miscellaneous
Mr. Levy says "Moses wrote the Ten Commandments".
In fact according to the bible Moses brought down the Ten Commandments
that had been written in stone by God.