Legends of Western Cinema Week Blog Celebration – In Old Oklahoma (1943)

This is my second of 7 entries in the Legends of Western Cinema Week Blog Celebration being hosted by Hamlette of Hamlette’s Soliloquy, Heidi of Along the Brandywine, and Olivia of Meanwhile, in Rivendell

Tnx for letting me partake Ladies!

“Stick to your jobs. Keep working as long as you can.” – Dan

Number of Times Seen – 1 (21 Jul 2019)

Brief Synopsis – During the turn of the 2th Century, a young female writers moves away to the frontier following a scandal and become embroiled in a love triangle with a former war hero and a businessman.

My Take on it – AS a fan of John Wayne films, I was quite curious to see what this one was all about especially since I had never heard of it beforehand.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty mediocre Western that mostly doesn’t work despite the great cast led by Wayne.

The film is a love triangle yet all 3 of the leads have absolutely no chemistry together which would help make their romance more appealing and realistic.

The pacing is rally slow and the story jumps around too much for its own good.

Despite this being a love story, the characters aren’t developed deeply enough and its hard to really care about what will happen to any of them.

The subplot dealing with the oil industry is actually intriguing, but the story focuses too much effort on the love triangle and doesn’t allow the oil industry aspect to flourish enough on its own and is mostly comes across as seeming superficial.

Not much really happens in this film and unfortunately the relatively short run time makes too much of it feel rushed which is a shame.

Bottom Line – Pretty mediocre western despite its great cast led by Wayne. The story itself moves along at a really slow pace and they don’t find a way to develop these characters enough for us to care about them even though this film’s main premise is a love triangle.  The storyline is largely focused on the love story which takes away from the intriguing oil subplot which comes across as seeming too superficial.  Nothing very exciting happens over the course of this film and it probably would have been more conducive to audiences if things would have been much more expanded since the way it’s done feels too rushed.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – As Wayne’s character builds his oil rig and races to strike oil, the words of the months appearing on screen to show time passing are in an art deco font–a strange choice, seeing as the film’s story is set in the early 20th century before the Roaring 20s. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)

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