The Big Gusher

I knew that I had seen a similar movie with perhaps the same male leads, but a different profession, and it turns out that I was right. The macho team of Wayne Morris and Preston Foster had appeared the year before I Columbia's "The Tougher They Come" where they ran a struggling lumber business. The profession has changed to oil, and it's a drunken sale that gets them into the profession. Along for the ride is a third partner, blonde bombshell Dorothy Patrick whom they assumed help trick them into the sale. Then there's comic sidekick Paul E. Burns who can find oil with the help of his special tree branch, and after selling the property and buying it back at a loss (profit for him), Emmet Vogan is none too pleased. Of course, there's obligatory fight between the partners over the alluring Miss Patrick, and this threatens to destroy the business before it gets off the ground. Good action and a bit of personal conflict makes this watchable, but easily forgettable.

There's nothing much that's wrong with this story of wildcatters trying to bring in a well, but it's never particularly engrossing, despite some real talent, including William Whitely, one of Columbia's great B cinematographers who never got a chance to do much in the movies, but went into TV and picked up a bunch of awards for his work on BONANZA. He offers an assortment of standard but well-shot compositions. But given the sort of movie which used to star Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable, male leads Wayne Morris and Preston Foster seem to be barely in the same movie. Dorothy Patrick is OK as the female lead and Paul E. Burns is excellent as the crackpot dowser. But the whole piece has been done many times before, often with better talent and definitely with better scripts. Unless you are a great fan of any of the talent involved, skip this one.