A tumblin' tumbleweed,
The prairie is my race track,
The wild wind is my steed!
Tumbleweeds is a 1925 silent Western film about the Cherokee Strip Land Run of 1893. It was the last film of notable silent cowboy star William S. Hart.
For years, cowboys have been grazing their cattle on the open range of the Cherokee Strip, but all that's coming to an end now. The U.S. government has decided to open up that land to settlement. At first, cowboys Don Carver (Hart) and Kentucky Rose (Lucien Littlefield) are not happy about this development, but then, they discover that some of these incoming homesteaders are quite pretty, such as Molly (Barbara Bedford) and Widow Riley (Lillian Leighton). However, their dreams may be ruined by the duplicitous "sooners" Noll (J. Gordon Russell) and Freel (Richard Neill).
In 1939, the film was rereleased with a talkie prologue.
This film has the examples of:
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Carver ruffles Bart's hair.
- As the Good Book Says...: One of the settlers is reading Psalm 23:1-2"The Lord is my Shepherd-
I shall not want
He maketh me to lie down
in green pastures —" - Beta Couple: Kentucky Rose and Widow Riley are paired off in their own subplot.
- Call to Agriculture: Carver doesn't plan to follow this trope at first, but then, he meets Molly.
- Gender-Blender Name: "Kentucky Rose" is the name of a very masculine cowboy.
- Meet Cute: Carver meets Molly when he accidentally lassoes her.
- Samus Is a Girl: "That ain't no homesteader — it's a woman." Turns out women can be homesteaders too.
- Second Act Break Up: This occurs when Molly sees Carver getting arrested as a "sooner."
- Twilight of the Old West: The film is set in 1893, when one of the last "wild" areas was given over to homesteaders. Carver announces, "Boys — it's the last of the West."
- Would Harm a Senior: At the end of the film, Noll and Freel try to bully an elderly couple off their land.
