Adapted from the novel Cimarron by Edna Ferber
Sick of living with his in-laws in Wichita, Yancey Cravat moves to Oklahoma in the land rush of 1889 with his wife Sabra, young son Cimarron, and black servant Isaiah. Yancey quickly makes a name for himself as the editor of the town newspaper, in which he defends Native American rights and expresses other controversial opinions. But his wanderlust gets the best of him, and he often takes off for years at a time without a word to his family, which now includes daughter Donna, leaving Sabra to raise the children and keep the paper going on her own.
I found it fascinating, not to mention painful, to read and watch this story, with its blatant racism and sexism, in 2017, knowing that while we may have gotten more politically correct, we definitely haven't come as far as we should have by now. Most of the racism, particularly against Native Americans, is condemned, at least by Yancey. Sabra hates them for most of the story and only comes around towards the end. This is particularly uncomfortable since, at least in the book, it's told from Sabra's perspective. The movie skips over a lot of the parts that happened when Yancey wasn't there, which makes them seem more like dual protagonists, but in the book Sabra is unquestionably the main character, though I didn't really get the impression that the author was condoning her xenophobic opinions, at least when it was directed against the Native Americans. Racism in other forms - against African-Americans, Mexicans, and Jewish people - was presented and neither condoned nor condemned, which was realistic but uncomfortable.
One thing that I noticed and found especially interesting, if unsurprising, was that a lot of the racism was cut out or toned down in the movie. There are several Native American characters in the book who feature quite prominently; the only one who made it into the movie was Ruby Big Elk, who marries Cimarron Cravat. In the book, her parents visit Yancey and Sabra to tell them that the marriage has taken place and invite them to a ceremony; in the movie, Cim's just like "I'm marrying Ruby" - at which the viewers are almost like "Who?" since she's barely been in the movie up to that point - and Sabra says, "No you're not" and he retorts, "Dad says it's okay" and that's that. There are a few Native Americans in the background of other scenes, and a couple of them speak briefly, but Ruby's the only one who gets both a name and a speaking part. And this was 1931, so it almost goes without saying that they're mostly - possibly exclusively - played by white people in makeup.
Apart from having way fewer Native Americans and fewer scenes of Sabra on her own, the movie is fairly consistent with the book apart from two major changes. One is the character of Jesse Rickey, the printer at the newspaper. In the book he's described as an alcoholic who is good at his job when he's sober. In the movie he doesn't drink excessively but has a stammer that other characters make fun of until they get to know and love him. That was kind of unnecessary. The second change is quite complex and involves both the killing of the outlaw The Kid and the death of the servant Isaiah. In the book, the killing of The Kid happens when Sabra is on her way home from a visit to her parents, so it's only described after the fact, whereas in the movie, she's there watching it happen. In the movie, Isaiah is shot and killed in the crossfire. That's a lot cleaner than the book's version of his death, which comes several years after The Kid's. While Yancey is away, Sabra hires a Native American teenager to help her with the housework. In the movie it's implied that Ruby Big Elk was the first and only. In the book the first was Arita Red Feather, who ends up having Isaiah's baby, for which crime her tribe executes both of them. So the film eliminates both the unwed teen pregnancy and the gruesome method of their executions, which results in even less representation by cutting out yet another Native character and significantly reducing the screen time of the one African-American character.
To be honest, though, I wasn't really surprised that they cut out the whole Isaiah/Arita thing. On the contrary, I was a bit surprised that the movie didn't take out more of the sexual aspects until I remembered that this was still pre-Code. One of the major scenes in both the book and the film are when Yancey returns after five years away and immediately defends a prostitute whom Sabra has been trying to run out of town. In the book this happens before he goes to war, and in the movie he's already gone to war, but other than that, the scene is pretty consistent in both versions. The film does neglect to mention that the old rich man whom Donna sets her sights on is married to someone else when she starts seeing him. Apparently divorce was considered more scandalous than prostitution in 1931.
Overall, the best aspect of the adaptation is the spot-on casting of Sabra and Yancey. Irene Dunne perfectly captures both Sabra's innocence at the beginning and the way she grows and matures while generally standing by her convictions. Richard Dix acts exactly as Yancey is described. Several times the book mentions the way he lowers his head like a buffalo about to charge, and he does that in the movie, but it's subtle. When I watched it the first time, I would never have described him as doing that, but after reading the book I definitely noticed it. I think it would have been very easy to overdo this and make it look silly, but the way Dix does it looks perfectly natural. So even though the plot and the themes were slightly off, at least the movie got the main characters right.
The next winner of this award was Bad Girl, based on the novel by Viña Delmar, which I just finished reading today, so I should be blogging about that pretty soon.
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