Hollywood Flashback: ‘Cimarron’ Bet on Oklahoma and Struck Oscar Gold

Ninety-two years before Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon would wrestle with Osage County's troubling history, there was another Oscar-nominated film that explored the very same Oklahoma terrain, even if it did so with kid gloves on. 1931's Cimarron is best remembered today — if it's remembered at all — for its epic opening land-rush sequence (it required a week of shooting, 5,000 extras and 28 cameramen). Directed by Wesley Ruggles, who like Scorsese also helmed an adaptation of The Age of Innocence, Cimarron was the first Western to win a best picture statuette — and remained the only one until Dances With Wolves galloped onto the big screen 59 years later. 

In 1931, the talkie experiment was only 4 years old and Tinseltown was in the throes of a seismic shift — something that THR noted in its review at the time: "Whether or not another movie as great is soon filmed, Cimarron must stand as the first of the talkers to surpass all screen entertainment. It will go on record as such, and serve as one of those bookmarks in the pages of motion picture history, closing one era, and opening another." 

Starring the stalwart Richard Dix and Irene Dunne in her second screen role, RKO's take on Edna Ferber's novel about a couple attempting to forge a new life in America's last "unclaimed" frontier was the studio's attempt to play in the same prestige sandbox as the majors. With a steep $1.4 million budget (roughly $25 million today), Cimarron has not aged well, at least in terms of its manifest-destiny politics, casual theft of Native American land and Black servant characters played for comic relief. Yet its ambition and spectacle are hard to dismiss. When the third annual Academy Award nominations were announced, Cimarron received nods in seven categories and won for art direction, best adapted screenplay and best picture. 

Nine decades on, Scorsese has given us a clearer-eyed historical corrective, but there's at least part of Cimarron's legacy he no doubt would love to repeat: its triumph on Oscar night.

This story first appeared in a February stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.