Gold Is Where You Find It

Gold is Where You Find It is a 1938 American Western Technicolor film that gives a fictionalized account of a true event — an ecological disaster whose effects are still felt in California today. Directed by Michael Curtiz and starring George Brent, Olivia de Havilland, and Claude Rains, with a screenplay by Warren Duff and Robert Buckner based on a story by Clements Ripley, the film is set 30 years after the first California Gold Rush, when hydraulic mining sends floods of muddy sludge into the Sacramento Valley, destroying crops and homes, ruining land and water sources and killing people caught in their path. The film highlights the conflict between the mining companies and the wheat farmers by adding a romance between a mining engineer and the daughter of a prominent farmer. She is herself dedicated to the idea that fruit can be raised in the valley. This Technicolor feature film was released on February 12, 1938, by Warner Bros. Pictures.