Edna Ferber is the fourth subject in this Women’s History Month series of women who had a major impact on the Ferguson Home Museum.  Ferber visited the Ferguson family and crafted a novel “Cimarron” about pioneering Oklahoma featuring the Ferguson’s story. The 1931 movie from the novel won the Academy Award for best picture, the first Western to win this honor.

Ferber’s Newspaper Experience

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1885 to a Hungarian Jewish immigrant father and US-born mother, Ferber graduated from high school in Appleton, WI.   She worked as a reporter for the local newspaper, then in Milwaukee. She later covered the 1920 Democratic and Republic conventions for the United Press Association.  This newspaper experience shaped her interest in early Oklahoma newspapers such as the Watonga Republican published by the Fergusons.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_Ferber.

Ferber visits Oklahoma

Ferber had early success with short stories and won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1924 novel So Big.  In May 1927 or 1928, Ferber visited fellow Pulitzer Prize winner William Allen White in Emporia, Kansas.  Mrs. Ferber was spellbound learning about land runs, oil discovery and other aspects of early Oklahoma history.  Ferber and the White family visited Oklahoma on a three-day trip, and Ferber stayed on to learn more.  She met Walter Ferguson, the son of T. B. and Elva Ferguson, who advised her to visit Elva Ferguson in Watonga.  Ferber spent some days in Watonga interviewing Elva Ferguson and many others. She pored over old settler accounts, letters and the Watonga Republican.  In 1930, she published Cimarron (Spanish word meaning untamed).  Cimarron Dreams by Jim Logan published in Oklahoma Today May 2025 https://digitalprairie.ok.gov/digital/collection/stgovpub/id/729711

Cimarron wins Academy Award for Best Picture

The characters are Yancey Cravat, a lawyer-news editor, was possibly a combination of T.B. Ferguson and Temple Houston, youngest son of Sam Houston, a lawyer in Woodward, OK.  Sabra, Yancey’s young wife, and their son “Cim” are his family.  The book was the best-selling novel of 1930.  RKO studios paid a record $100,000 for rights and produce Cimarron as an early “talkie” which won the Academy Award for best picture in 1931.  The movie was remade in 1960.

Ferber’s works made into movies

Ferber, hailed as one of the greatest novelist of her time, published other books made into movies.  These included So Big, Giant, Show Boat, and  Ice Palace. She helped adapt her short story “Old Man Minick“, published in 1922, into a play (Minick) and it was thrice adapted to film.  www.Wikipedia.org

The Pioneering spirit of Oklahomans

Ferber publicized the pioneering spirit of early Oklahomans, newspaper editors, young and courageous women and men and their children.  She highlighted the plight of native Americans from whom land was aggressively sought to make way for settlers.