If you haven't seen "Boom Town" back home, it's worth a trip downtown to find out what MGM can do with a super-budget, four stars, and a plot about oil. The oil proves to be the most savory ingredient in the mixture. It leads Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, two wildcatters, on an exciting chase from Oklahoma and the tropics, to California, from poverty to wealth, back to poverty more times than you can count. The details of a raw, booming oil town, Burkburnett, are interesting and well-handled: the oil fever, the gushers, the fires, and above all the incurable wildcatter, always sure that his ground covers oil, always looking for a partner who will stake him. When MGM sets out to tell what has been done about oil in this country, they do it, and no mistake.

But what could Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr have to do with oil? In "Boom Town" the answer is, not much. Tracy loves Colbert, who loves Gable, who trifles with Lamarr. In the end Gable sticks with Colbert, Tracy strings along in his usual friendly manner, and Lamarr drops quietly out of the picture, which is a damn shame.

Just because there are four stars instead of two, don't expect them to do anything out of the ordinary. Hedy Lamarr gets the worst of it, appearing late in the picture, and leaving early after a few appearances, looking just fine but not saying much. The other three do what they have to do very pleasantly, falling in love with the proper intensity, and getting awfully mad now and then. That's the way those oil people were, maybe.