In Old Oklahoma

Dan Somers is a cowboy adventurer just returning from the Philippines and before that he fought in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the 1898 Battle of San Juan Hill. When his horse dies on him in the desert he hops aboard a train heading to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, where tycoon Jim Gardner struck it rich in oil. In Gardner’s private car is the lovely Catherine Elizabeth Allen, a schoolteacher who has been run out of town as a hussy by a women’s group after writing a know-it-all scandalous book about love even though she’s an inexperienced woman. The poor cowboy and tycoon fall for her, and she, at first, chooses the tycoon. In town, Dan runs into his old friend stage driver Despirit Dean and they teamup. When Gardner can’t steal from the Indians the land where there’s more oil to drill Dan becomes an oilman and President Roosevelt arbitrates who will get first crack at dealing with the Indians, choosing his old friend Dan. But he must bring in ten thousand gallons of oil within a four-month period, and if he can’t the sweetheart deal is turned over to the established oilman Gardner. —Ozu’s World of Movie Reviews