Elia Kazan directed Sea of Grass, a drama set in the American Southwest, based on the 1936 novel by Conrad Richter, starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Melvyn Douglas.
Kazan was reportedly displeased with the resulting film and discouraged people from seeing it.
The film opens in St. Louis, Missouri, on Lutie Cameron’s (Katharine Hepburn) wedding day, after short courtship with a cattle rancher of New Mexico.
As she dresses, she receives a telegram from her fiancé Col. Brewton (Spencer Tracy) to board the train for New Mexico to marry him in the small town of Salt Fork.
The first person she meets is Brice Chamberlain (Melvyn Douglas), who warns her of unhappiness with the tyrannical Brewton. He takes her to the courthouse, where she sees Brewton testifying against a settler who had tried to claim part of the government-owned land where Brewton runs his cattle.
Brewton takes her out to see the vast prairie, describing how he had fought with Indians to run his cattle there and to make it fit for ranching. He runs his cattle on government-owned land, and opposes homesteaders because he believes the Great Plains do not get enough rain to sustain farming.
She persuades Brewton to allow a family of settlers onto the ranch. Brewton warns her that the settlers will not last more than six months, due to some unforeseeable circumstance.
When Lutie visits the settlers, she is surprised to see Chamberlain, who had helped them file their claim on the land. Lutie confesses her struggles to adapt to her new home and her husband’s emotional distance. Lutie then gives birth to a daughter, Sara Beth.
As the years pass, the town doctor keeps Lutie informed about her children through letters. On his deathbed, he chides Brewton for driving Lutie away by his emotional distance. After the doctor’s death, Chamberlain takes up the correspondence to tell Lutie about her children. He shares his concerns that Brock has grown into a reckless young man, too endowed with charm and luck.
For years, Brock has endured taunts from townsfolk about his “real father,” but the truth has never been acknowledged.
Brewton reaches the cabin where the posse is exchanging gunfire with Brock, holed up inside. When Brewton enters the cabin, he finds his son fatally shot.
Having read in the newspaper that Brock was on the run, Lutie returns to Salt Fork. Just before arriving, she learns that he has been killed. She decides to keep traveling to San Francisco later that night. In town, she sees Brewton escorting Brock’s body to the church.
Sara Beth visits her mother, warning her against seeing Brewton as it would stir up more trouble. In the end, however, Sara Beth breaks down and invites her mother back to the house, where she reconciles with Brewton.
The production was originally planned for Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy.
There is irony that a story based in New Mexico exclaiming the Great Plains are cattle country was using a backdrop that later became part of the McKelvie National Forest. Kazan did not like his final product, and advised friends against seeing it.
Although it received mostly tepid reviews, the movie was the most commercially successful of all the Hepburn-Tracy MGM films, making $3,150,000 in the US and $1,539,000 overseas. resulting in a profit of $742,000.
Cast
Katharine Hepburn as Lutie Cameron
Spencer Tracy as Col. Jim Brewton
Robert Walker as Brock
Melvyn Douglas as Brice Chamberlain
Phyllis Thaxter as Sara Beth
Edgar Buchanan as Jeff
Harry Carey as Doc Reid
Charles Trowbridge as George Cameron
Russell Hicks as Maj. Dell Harney
Trevor Bardette as Andy Boggs
Morris Ankrum as A.J. Crane
