The Oklahoma Kid (1939)

(On Cable TV, October 2022) I’ve long held a fascination for the sheer weirdness of the Oklahoma land rush, and I like both Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney, so The Oklahoma Kid should be a lot of fun to watch, right? Well, mostly. The depiction of the land rush isn’t up to what we saw in Cimarron (both versions)—nor is it strictly factual, considering issues in sticking with the right time and place. Then there’s Bogart—by 1939 an increasingly valuable player in the Warner Brothers troupe, but not yet the legendary Bogart of posterity. There’s no way late-1940s Bogart would have accepted a role as a stereotypical black-clad villain cowboy, but this is what we have here. Finally, there’s Cagney, not quite at ease out of the city streets of his urban screen persona but giving it all he’s got in a typically exuberant role—and he gets to play the virtuous protagonist too! The rest of the film is rather standard good-versus-evil-in-cowboy hats stuff, but the comparatively slick execution and lighthearted tone of the result make it still quite watchable—plus, there are a few lines of dialogue here that come close to acknowledging the appropriation of Native lands, which is about as progressive as a western could be in 1939. While The Oklahoma Kid hasn’t gone down in history as a particularly fine or well-respected western (even if you’re limiting yourself to 1939, there’s Stagecoach, Destry Rides Against, Union Pacific and maybe Young Mr. Lincoln to contend with), it’s still reasonably entertaining, and maybe that’s enough. Well, that and Cagney fighting it out with Bogart.