Tumbleweeds
About Tumbleweeds
Ranch foreman Don Carver wants the Cherokee Strip left to cattle rather than homesteaders. He falls for Molly Lassiter and fights Bill Freel and her brother Noll, who plan to take the Box K ranch when the land opens. Branded a Sooner, Carver is jailed, breaks out as the 1893 rush begins, and races them for the claim. After a shootout he turns himself in and is reunited with Molly.
Cast & crew
More about Tumbleweeds
King Baggot directed. William S. Hart produced and stars as Don Carver. Hal G. Evarts and C. Gardner Sullivan wrote the script from the Cherokee Strip land rush of September 16, 1893. United Artists released the film on December 27, 1925. It was Hart's last movie.
Themes
Background
The Cherokee Strip, on the Kansas–Oklahoma line near Caldwell, Kansas, was opened to homesteaders on September 16, 1893. Evarts built the script on that day.
Making
Hart, who had been the best-known Western star of the 1910s, produced this picture himself and then stopped making films.
Reviews
Gary Johnson, in Images Journal, wrote that the box office was mild and that the film is arguably Hart's finest.
Look
Joseph August photographed the rush and the prairie scenes.
Music
Silent on first release, with English intertitles. The 1939 Astor reissue added a synchronized score under Hart's spoken introduction.
Preservation
Prints of the 1925 film and of the 1939 reissue survive. Image Entertainment's 2002 DVD used a Paul Killiam print of the reissue. A copy of the silent film is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Barbara Bedford plays Molly Lassiter. Jack Murphy plays her brother Bart.
- J. Gordon Russell is Noll Lassiter. Richard Neill is Bill Freel.
- Lucien Littlefield plays the cowhand Kentucky Rose. Lillian Leighton plays the widow Mrs. Riley.
- The government was opening land that had been leased to cattlemen.
- Astor Pictures reissued the film in 1939 with an eight-minute spoken prologue by Hart, then 74, and a synchronized score. That version runs about 88 minutes.
- In 2002 Image Entertainment issued the 1939 version on DVD from a print in the Paul Killiam collection.
Scenes
- Carver lassoes Molly Lassiter.
- Riders start across the Strip when the land opens.
- Carver faces Freel and Noll in a shootout at the claim, then turns himself in.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Tumbleweeds (1925).webm)
- Image Entertainment DVD (2002), the 1939 Astor reissue
