Boom Town (1940)

"Boom Town" is possibly the most unabashedly red-meat he-man movie ever released. Oil is wrenched from Mother Earth by Randian heroes and sold for profit to fuel the industrial revolution, and congressional sleaze-weasels fronting the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) are the bad guys who gum up the works. Derricks burn and fists fly, because excitement. Gary Cooper's speech at the end of "The Fountainhead" is tepid and passionless compared to Clark's defense of similar principles here.

(There's also cloying romantic drama in here for the ladies.)

It made mad money at the box office -- second only to "Gone With the Wind" as Clark Gable's biggest picture, and was the top ticket-seller in the year of its release.

But then, change: "Red Hollywood"* was in full-swing* behind the scenes by 1943, and such films quickly became impossible to make due to the influence of the CPUSA-controlled Story Analysts Guild. There were no reissuings or remasterings for the pro-capitalist likes of "Boom Town", and it languished into obscurity. The theatrical cut has never been available on DVD or other media.