The Sea of Grass (film)

The Sea of Grass is a 1947 American Western film set in the American Southwest. It was directed by Elia Kazan and based on the 1936 novel of the same name by Conrad Richter. The film stars Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Melvyn Douglas.

Kazan was reportedly displeased with the resulting film and discouraged people from seeing it.

Plot
In St. Louis, Missouri, on Lutie Cameron's wedding day, she receives a telegram from her fiancé, cattle rancher Col. Brewton, telling her to board the train for New Mexico to marry him in the small town of Salt Fork. The first person she meets in town is Brice Chamberlain, who warns her of likely unhappiness with Brewton, locally considered a tyrant.

At the ranch, Brewton takes her out to see the prairie. 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.

Lutie persuades Brewton to allow a family of settlers onto the ranch. When she visits them, she is surprised to see Chamberlain, who rides with her on her way home and confesses his attraction to her. Lutie confesses her struggles to adapt to her new home and her husband's emotional distance. She gives birth to a daughter, Sara Beth.

During a blizzard, the settlers are alarmed by the sound of Brewton's cattle near their house. Fearful for his wheat crop, one man goes out of the house with his rifle, planning to scare off the cattle. When they stampede, he shoots and kills one of the cows. His pregnant wife then goes into the storm and loses her baby. Having lost their crop and baby, they are broken and concede the land to Brewton.

Brewton tells Lutie that he warned her the settlers faced severe challenges. Furious with him, Lutie decides to leave Salt Fork for a while and goes to Denver. While planning to return to St. Louis, she runs into Chamberlain. The two have a discreet affair, and Lutie returns to Brewton, where she gives birth to a boy named Brock.

Chamberlain lobbies for a Federal District Court in Salt Fork, and he wins election as its judge. Brewton believes that Chamberlain will decide in favor of settlers on "his" land. As he arms himself and his men to ward off the settlers, Lutie pleads with him to reconsider. They argue, and Brewton gets Lutie to confess to the affair with Chamberlain. She agrees to leave, but he refuses to let her take the children.

Back in St. Louis, she consults a lawyer. He says that if she testifies that Chamberlain is Brock's father, she could win custody of her son but lose custody of Sara Beth. Convinced that fighting would cause too much damage to her children, Lutie stays away. Chamberlain tries to get her to fight for Brock's custody so they can run away together as a family, but Lutie does not love him enough to marry him.

As the years pass, Brock endures taunts from townsfolk about his "real father.” During a card game, his opponent refers to Brock as "judge", referring to Chamberlain. Brock gets drawn into conflict and, when his opponent draws his pistol, Brock shoots him fatally. He flees, and the pursuing posse shoots and kills him.

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. Sara Beth visits her mother, warning her against trying to see Brewton and stirring up more trouble. Lutie tells Sara Beth that she is glad that Brewton will have his daughter to love him. Sara Beth breaks down and invites her mother back to the house, where she reconciles with Brewton.

Cast

 * Spencer Tracy as Col. Jim Brewton
 * Katharine Hepburn as Lutie Cameron
 * Robert Walker as Brock Brewton
 * Melvyn Douglas as Brice Chamberlain
 * Phyllis Thaxter as Sarah Beth Brewton
 * Edgar Buchanan as Jeff
 * Harry Carey as Doc Reid
 * Ruth Nelson as Selina Hall
 * Wm. "Bill" Phillips as Banty
 * Robert Armstrong as Floyd McCurtin
 * Charles Trowbridge as	George Cameron
 * Russell Hicks	as Major Harney
 * Trevor Bardette as Andy Boggs
 * Robert Barrat as Judge White
 * Morris Ankrum as Crane
 * George Reed as Uncle Nat (uncredited)

Production
In his autobiography, Kazan wrote that he had been excited at the prospect of filming The Sea of Grass. He was looking forward to working on the Great Plains, "where the grass still grew from unbroken sod." However, the producers decided that the majority of the film would be shot against a process screen to use some of the existing "ten thousand feet" of 'sea of grass' stock footage, rather than sending the film crew on location. According to The Films of Katharine Hepburn, MGM had thousands of reels of footage of prairie. Kazan was extremely disappointed. He also did not like the costumes, which he did not get to see until late in the process. He thought the producers had approved clothes for Katharine Hepburn that in design and quantity did not fit the frontier environment, but changes were restricted due to production deadlines. The 'Sea of Grass' scenes used as process screen backdrop were shot in the Sandhills of Nebraska on the ranch of former Nebraska Governor Samuel McKelvie. There is no little 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.

The production was planned for Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy at the beginning.

Reception
Although it received mostly tepid critical reviews, the movie was the most commercially successful of all the Hepburn-Tracy MGM films, making $3,150,000 in the US and Canada and $1,539,000 overseas. This resulted in a profit to MGM of $742,000. Kazan did not like his final product, and advised friends against seeing it.