When Paramount Pictures hired Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern and Irene Dunne for 1937's High, Wide and Handsome, they were hoping for a Showboat (1935)-sized smash. It turned out to be a financial failure and was promptly forgotten. But this musical treatment of the Pennsylvania oil rush of 1859 is deserving of rediscovery, as it is directed with flair by Rouben Mamoulian, who had been an early film musical innovator on Love Me Tonight (1932).

As with that early sound experiment, High, Wide and Handsome would work diligently to incorporate the songs into the narrative, instead of standing apart from the story, as in a Busby Berkeley movie. Mamoulian biographer David Luhrssen writes that Hammerstein "devoted most of the fall of 1937 to the screenplay, working closely with Kern to integrate the score with the plot, and with Mamoulian on a shooting script that married romance with fact and fantasy."

The romance emerges between Peter Cortlandt (Randolph Scott, at peak pulchritude) and medicine show performer Sally Watterson (Irene Dunne). Cortlandt is an eccentric farm boy pursuing his dream of discovering oil, while Sally is a showgirl for her dad's traveling revue, kicking her gams to sell bogus elixirs. When their wagon goes up in flames Peter offers them to stay at his place. It is under a grove of apple blossoms where Peter and Sally fall in love and where Dunne beautifully sings "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" (Lyrics - Hammerstein, Music - Kern), which would become a standard covered by Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee and Nina Simone.

This reverie, shot in the wilds of Chino, California, is short-lived. Because Peter does strike oil and with it arrives an endless litany of business problems, chief among them the railroad baron Walt Brennan (Alan Hale), who jacks up the freight prices, knowing Peter has no other way of getting his crude oil refined. So instead Peter decides to build his own pipeline across the country. Brennan sends hired thugs to destroy the lengthening line, leaving Peter no time to live with his new wife Sally. Sally, lonely and rejected, runs off to the circus to reunite with her dad. It is only with Peter on the brink of destruction and with Brennan's mercenary army closing in on him, that she is forced to make a decision on their future.

Paramount executive Adolph Zukor told producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. to "spare no expense", and it's a gorgeous-looking film, shot by Theodor Sparkuhl and Victor Milner with an impressive sense of scale. The sheer material undertaking of the pipeline is made clear in overhead shots of geometric beauty (soon to be chopped to bits by Brennan's boys). The whole production has a swashbuckling energy, provided in no small part by the leads. Early in her career, Dunne studied to be an opera singer, and she gets to showcase the range in her voice, from the sweetly chirping "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" to the brassy belting of "Allegheny Al." Randolph Scott lends his aw-shucks physicality to the role, which he truly lets loose in the climactic brawl between Brennan's whip-wielding men, Peter's pipeline workers and Sally's circus pals. The whole film's attempt to blend picaresque romance, Western adventure and big top drama explodes in this wild fracas, in which bearded ladies are beating up cowboys while elephants run wild.

It also features a who's-who of character actors, who invest bit parts with the same wooly energy as the rest of the feature. Elizabeth Patterson nearly steals the movie as Grandma Cortlandt, a sweet homebody with a poison tongue. There is also Raymond Walburn as Sally's con-man dad Doc Watterson, whose gravelly homespun voice could steal a lollipop from a baby. Also delightful is Akim Tamiroff as Joe Varese, a conniving nightclub owner who mischievously pets his numerous cats while waiting for Peter to accept a devious land purchase offer.

Mamoulian recalled it as "a very difficult story to film". It certainly had pressure to perform from Paramount, but the script had an uneven tone, from light romantic comedy to dark industrial adventure and back again. It was a disappointment for everyone involved - Mamoulian and Hammerstein would not have their contracts renewed at Paramount. The latter felt especially insulted, as Luhrssen reports in Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen. After the film's sneak preview, "Zukor crossed the floor of Hollywood's Riviera Country Club to shake Hammerstein's hand and say, 'That's the greatest picture we ever made.' A few months later, after failing to recoup his investment, Zukor walked past Hammerstein in a restaurant and looked through him as if he were a stranger." While it wasn't appreciated in its time, there is so much to savor here. Whether you are a fan of Oscar Hammerstein's lyrics, Mamoulian's elegant incorporation of Jerome Kern's music, or the inspired gallivanting of Dunne and Scott, it has something for nearly everyone.

By R. Emmet Sweeney