Photo of the Day

No. 358

Hedy Lamarr, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Claudette Colbert, "Boom Town" (MGM 1940). Oil derricks in Burkburnett, TX, c. 1920.

For Clark Gable, playing a free-wheeling oil field wildcatter in the 1940 film Boom Town came easy.

The film was inspired by the story of Burkburnett, Texas, a sleepy cotton-farming town where, in 1918, a lucky farmer struck oil and thousands of oil field workers took over the town.

As Burkburnett was becoming a boom town, twenty-year-old Clark Gable was …