I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Blistering performances.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

...and that's fine by me! Most films about ecology have been cheap exploitation (eg, "Frogs"). This one is not. It's a moderately serious story about the need to use natural resources wisely. There's no question this is the reason the film was made. The script's seemingly accurate details suggest that someone did a lot of research about the oil industry."Tulsa" is also a good example of the principle that you can't tell stories about ideas, only people. Though exaggerated, the characterizations aren't too overdrawn, and we're willing to believe that Susan Hayward's character discards her principles in favor or money. (This is human nature -- unfortunately.) Similarly, Tanner //does not// change his beliefs at the end.Hayworth's performance is better-than-competent, and Robert Preston does a great job imitating Clark Gable. (Note the scene where the fully clothed Hayworth kisses Preston, dropping a gown she's holding, to suggest you-know what. It's a fine example of directors circumventing the Code.) The actors playing Indians at least //look like// Indians, rather than spray-painted whites.Though 65 years old, "Tulsa" has hardly dated. The issues at its center have still not been resolved -- nor have human beings developed better values.

Where were the Barnes and Ewing families of "Dallas" fame when this took place? It's the 1920's, and narrator Chill Wills explains how Tulsa became the oil capital of the world because of the conglomerate of various oil companies facing the need to be responsible for nature as well as profits. Native American Pedro Pedro Armendáriz wants to keep his property out of the hands of oil men, but childhood pal Susan Hayward (whom he secretly loves) convinces him to get involved. Along the way, Hayward falls for genealogist Robert Preston (pre-"Music Man") and keeps him guessing whether or not she'll choose him while becoming the next Alexis Carrington of her day over ruthless oilman Lloyd Gough, who could care less about the cows he kills with the oil infested waters they drink out of.Yes, this pre-cursor to the two top nighttime soaps of the 1980's (that ironically dealt with the oil industry in Dallas Texas and Denver Colorado) were when they were at their best. Hayward hit the top of the female stars in 1949 with "House of Strangers" and "My Foolish Heart", and the colorful part in "Tulsa" was a dynamic part for her. Preston plays one of his few romantic roles prior to Broadway fame, while Chill Wills offers comic relief. Ed Begley, who played a ruthless businessman in Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth", has an important bit part that moves the plot forward, and the lovable Jimmy Conlin is his sidekick. Great color photography, and a fantastic "White Heat" style ending are other pluses.

(Some Spoilers) It's when cattleman Neise Lansing, Harry Shannon, found his prized cows poisoned from oil emitted from a nearby oil rig belonging to Tanner Petrouloum that he threw a fit. Mindlessly charging at the rig and yelling obscenities it suddenly started gushing crude with the top platform of the oil rig dropping down to earth on Lansing's unprotected, in him not wearing a regulation hardhat, head killing him.With her father dead Mr. Lansing's red headed and hot blooded daughter Cherokee, Susan Hayward, who's also a quarter American Indian demanded that the CEO of the oil company Bruce Tanner, Lloyd Gough, pay her for her father's dead cattle who were poisoned by spillage from his oil rig. With Tanner not being too cooperative in her dispute with him Cherokee later runs into oil man John Brady, Ed Begley, who had one two many at the local saloon. Brady too drunk to know whet he's doing handed Cherokee his deed to the land that's adjacent to that of the land that native American's Charlie Lightfoot, Chief Yowlachie, and her cousin Jim Redbird, Pedro Armendariz, own. By the time the evening was over Bradly was killed in a bar brawl with him not being around to sober up and take his land deed back!Seeing her chance of getting back at Tanner by beating him at his own game, the oil business, Cherokee started to turn her sights on the oil that she knew was under the ground in the late John Brady, now her, land and went to work on it! Not getting anywhere at first it wasn't until handsome and sure of himself Princeton rock specialist Brad Bradly, Robert Preston, the late John Brady's son showed up at Cherokee's rig that things started popping! Popping so much that within the next six months some dozen oil well popped up from under Cherokee's land that no one, including oil baron Tanner, ever figured were there!It's later when Cherokee decided to drop her square and not too greedy, in not wanting to make millions by polluting the land, fiancée Brad Brady in order to go into business with Tanner as his partner in the oil business that things started to get hot and gushy in and around Tulsa! With her and Tanner having oil rigs popping up all over and polluting the grazing lands and streams outside the city. With the environmentally conscious Jim Redbird refusing to have any oil-well drilled on his land Turnner decides to have the court declare him mentally incompetent thus taking his land away from him. This leads to Jim losing it when he finds his cattle, like those of Neise Lansing's, dead from poisoned water that both Tanner's and Cherokee's oil rigs polluted.**SPOILERS*** We soon see how dangerous it was for Tanner together with his new partner Cherokee to pump the land dry of its oil with the stream that Jim's cattle drank from catch fire when Jim just lit a match and threw in it to see if there was any oil let in it. In what looked like an end of the world fire and brimstone ending both Cherokee who finally saw the light, by seeing her entire land go up in flames, and her now back again boyfriend Brad risked their lives in dynamiting the burning oil wells before they spread into Tulas itself.P.S It was that fiery incident that thought everyone involved in the oil business to cool it and not go overboard in pumping the land dry of oil when in the end there wouldn't be, due fires and pollution, any land left to pump oil out of!

In the "oil capital of the world" of Tulsa, Okalahoma, pretty red-haired Susan Hayward (as Cherokee "Cherry" Lansing) is devastated to witness the accidental death of her rancher father. Moreover, Ms. Hayward is denied $20,000 restitution for her father's crushing death, because the oil company says he was "trespassing". After inheriting some oil leases of her own, Hayward gets a chance to get even with the industry responsible for her dad's demise. With the help of tough oilman Robert Preston (Brad "Broncho" Brady), Hayward becomes the oil queen tycoon of Tulsa. Then, wealth and power threaten to corrupt Hayward's character...John Fulton's "Special Photographic Effects" were deservedly noted at the annual "Academy Awards"; the fiery Technicolor, and Hayward's "modeling" turns, are the film's main attractions. Walter Wanger's production of Richard Wormser's story has an admirable conservation message; however, it is bogged down by simplistic stereotypical predictability. Pedro Armendáriz (as Jim Redbird) does as well as he can in the contrived "brave Indian with a crazy streak" role. Lloyd Gough (as Bruce Tanner) is quite an effective human oil slick. And, gum-chewing "cousin" Chill Wills (as Pinky Jimpson) offers a most memorable "Will Rogers"-type characterization; he also narrates, and sings a nice title song.****** Tulsa (4/13/49) Stuart Heisler ~ Susan Hayward, Robert Preston, Chill Wills