The Sea of Grass 1947

Lutie Cameron Brewton [Katharine Hepburn] is poised to marry in St. Louis, but on her wedding day a telegram from her fiancé—the cattle rancher Col. Brewton [Spencer Tracy]—orders her to board a train to New Mexico and marry him in the small town of Salt Fork. The first person she encounters there is Brice Chamberlain [Melvyn Douglas], who cautions her that life with Brewton might bring more unhappiness than happiness, painting Brewton as a local tyrant. Chamberlain accompanies Lutie toward the courthouse, where a judge is quietly dismissing charges against several of Jim’s men who harassed homesteaders laying claims to land Jim controls; the charges vanish for lack of evidence, and Jim’s faction rides high as Brewton’s power seems to grow. When Brewton glimpses Lutie in the crowd, he beams with triumph.

At the Brewton ranch, the landscape the couple will manage soon becomes the center of Lutie’s exposure to a clash of visions. Brewton shows her the prairie and speaks with unshakable conviction: the land’s beauty lies in cattle, not in farming, and he rails against the homesteaders who challenge his holdings. He contends that the Great Plains don’t receive enough rain for farming, a view shared by many locals and opposed by Chamberlain and others who see opportunity on the land. Lutie, unsure where she stands, feels pulled between her husband’s forceful worldview and the growing sympathy she discovers for the homesteaders.

Loneliness shadows Lutie’s days out on the vast prairie, so distant from town and female companionship. Brewton is seldom home, off with his ranch hands and cattle on the range, leaving Lutie with only her thoughts and a budding friendship with a displaced homesteading couple, Sam Hall [James Bell] and Selina Hall [Ruth Nelson]. She pleads with Brewton to allow them to settle, and he reluctantly agrees, opening a fragile door to a different kind of life on the land. When Lutie later visits them, she crosses paths with Chamberlain again; he and Lutie share a private moment, and he confesses his attraction to her. She admits her own struggles to adapt and her sense of isolation, yet she resists his advances. In time, Lutie bears a daughter, Sara Beth.

A blizzard tests every aspect of their fragile world. The Halls grow anxious as Brewton’s cattle threaten their wheat crop, and Sam ventures out with a rifle to drive the cattle away. A stampede erupts, and Sam shoots one of the cows. Brewton’s men strike Sam, and Selina rushes out into the storm to carry him home, losing their unborn baby in the process. The Halls, having lost both crop and child, concede the land to Brewton, and a chilling rift forms between them and Lutie; their bond with her frays as they cut ties to Salt Fork.

Brewton’s mounting fear of losing control hardens into a demand for loyalty. He warns Lutie that settlers will face brutal trials, and she chooses to leave Salt Fork for a time, heading to Denver. There she encounters Chamberlain once more, and the two begin a discreet, complicated affair. Lutie returns to Brewton and soon bears another child, a boy named Brock. During the birth, Lutie blurts out, in a moment of vulnerability, that Brock might be Chamberlain’s child. Brewton overhears this exchange; the doctor, Doc J. Reid [Harry Carey], tries to quiet the accusation, insisting childbirth can provoke hysterical thoughts, but Brewton cannot forget what he heard. From that moment, he suspects Lutie and Brock, watching her with growing suspicion.

Two years pass, and Chamberlain’s political ascent continues. He lobbies for a Federal District Court in Salt Fork, and he is elected as its judge. Brewton fears the court may tilt in favor of the settlers over his claims, and a new influx of homesteaders arrives with the potential to change Salt Fork’s fate. Lutie pleads with Brewton to reconsider, but he insists on arming himself and his men to repel the settlers. The couple argues, and Brewton forces Lutie to confess to the affair. He will not allow her to take the children, who are now two and four, and Lutie must retreat to St. Louis to protect them. A lawyer in St. Louis advises that if Lutie testifies that Brock’s father is Chamberlain, she might win Brock’s custody but risk Sara Beth’s; the bitter choice weighs heavily. Chamberlain urges Lutie to fight for Brock’s custody so they can run away together, but Lutie does not love him enough to marry him.

With Doc Reid’s aid, Lutie makes a restrained visit to Salt Fork when the children are five and three, but the kids do not remember her. A decade passes in which Chamberlain allows homesteaders to work the land, a drought arrives, and Salt Fork slips from prosperity into hardship. News of Brock and Sara Beth eventually reaches Salt Fork again—Sara Beth thrives and goes to college at sixteen, while Brock grows into a reckless, charismatic figure who uses charm and bravado to hide a volatile temper. A fateful card game ends with Brock killing a man who taunts him with the rumor of being Brewton’s son. Brock flees, hoping to spare Brewton further humiliation, but a posse corners him and shoots him down. A fragile reconciliation between Brock and Brewton comes only moments before Brock dies.

News of Brock’s death reaches Lutie as she heads back toward Salt Fork. Sara Beth warns her mother not to re-enter the fray, but Lutie confesses that she is glad Brewton will have his daughter to love him. Her love for Brewton remains, and she finally grasps the depth of his feelings for the sea of grass that shapes his life. Sara Beth breaks down, inviting her mother to return, and the two women reconcile with Brewton in the home they share, bringing the long, arduous journey of love, loss, and loyalty to a poignant close.