Richard Dix

Driven insane from isolation, a ship's captain begins to torment his third-mate. Thriller stars Oscar-nominee Richard Dix ("Cimarron").

A battle for control over a mountain pass plays out between a railroad surveyor and a freight company owner and a daughter caught in the middle.

Spaces were neither wide nor open in most early Sound Westerns. Not so in Cimarron.

Wounded while foiling a bank robbery by the James Gang, a cowboy awakens to find he has been elected marshal and must face a crook who’s even worse.

Two men who join forces to build a cattle empire and battle rustlers and bad weather soon find their battling each other.

Jimmy Farnsworth (Allen Kearns) bets his friend $5,000 that he can get any two people, under the proper environment, to fall in love and become engaged within a month. The two he chooses are young society girl Betty Duncan (Renée Macready) and Peter Darby (Richard Dix), a dashing electrician who agrees to pose as a society man at Jimmy's estate. Peter falls in love, however, with Joan Bently (Lois Wilson), Jimmy's fiancée. Marie, the maid and vampish Louise Endicott (Rita LaRoy) become enamored of Peter, and to top it off, Betty falls in love with the butler! This pre-code confection is chock full of farcical situations and makes for fun diversion.

The souls in question are silver-screen hopefuls in this witty, insightful glimpse at the early movie business. Feared lost for decades, it includes unique working cameos of director Erich von Stroheim and a non-Tramp Charlie Chaplin, and features starlet Eleanor Boardman, the "Cinderella of Hollywood" whose rags-to-riches story echoed her character's. Escaping from a train journey with her sinister new husband, Mem Steddon (Boardman) crawls across the California desert and spies her salvation: an Arab sheik riding a camel! The location movie crew brings Mem to Tinseltown, where bit parts and acting lessons lead her to starring roles - and a fiery finale with her murderous spouse Lew Cody). If you like classic Hollywood, you'll love this picture, full of carefully observed detail, warmth and plenty of soul.