Great Women of the Oil Fields

(or "Oils Well that Ends Well!")

(The Schoolteacher, the Oil Tycoon’s Wife and the Oil Fields Cook)

Enjoy the one-woman show written for Bartlesville, OK

and Phillips Petroleum's Centennial.

Three women. Three different stories.

One thing in common: OIL!

Boom or Bust – gushers and dry wells – from boom town to ghost town. You’ll discover the vital role oil played in America and around the world from the 1890s through the 1940s as seen through the lives of three women. Laurette introduces us to the characters she’s created to take us on the journey: the schoolteacher, the oil tycoon’s wife and the oil fields cook.

We begin in the 1930s in Oklahoma. Step inside the one-room schoolhouse and meet prim Miss Nancy Journeycake, the schoolteacher who tells the tale of how twenty-five years ago her world turned upside down. When she was a little girl, oil was discovered on her parents’ land. Almost overnight, Nancy became known as “the richest little Delaware Indian girl in the whole wide world.”

Nancy tells us, “We went from having barely enough to get along to having more than we ever dreamed of. Grandpa said we had ‘Too much.’”

The man who dug the well and struck it rich was the famous (and fictional) oil tycoon J.B. Bridges of BoomTown Oil, known by all as “the little man in the big Stetson hat.”

Next we’ll travel back to the mid-1920s and meet J.B.’s flamboyant wife (former bad Shakespearean actress), the lovable Margaret Bridges. We’ve been invited to Margaret and J.B.’s housewarming – er – mansion-warming party. In her own unique way “Maggie,” in full flapper attire, shares the story of how she and J.B. worked rigs in Texas and Oklahoma, facing constant danger and hardships before landing their big break.

Discover the poignant secret that links Margaret to the next character Laurette brings to life, “Queenie.” Tough as an old boot, Queenie is an oil fields cook for BoomTown Oil serving the pipeline workers. It’s now 1943 and we learn the vital role petroleum will play in winning the war – or losing it.

It seems Queenie has worked almost every major oil boom over the last 40 years – ever since she was a little girl and lost her Daddy in a boiler explosion at the huge Spindletop gusher in Beaumont, Texas in 1901.

Set a spell as Queenie cleans tables between shifts and shares some of the experiences “black gold” has given her. She tells us about the man she loved, her husband Luke who was “a shooter… a powder monkey – you know KA-BOOM – a nitroglycerine expert!”

“Luke’d come home all dirty an’ covered with oil,” Queenie says. “I’d rub his arms an’ legs down with burlap sacks to try to git the oil off. There warn’t no warshin’ it off, even if there’d been enough water, and there never was. An’ laundry?! Dogs! There warn’t hardly no laundry able to be done. Why, in the early days, Luke’d wear his overalls ‘till he couldn’t stand ‘em no longer – or ‘till they could stand up theyselves! Then he’d jes’ throw ‘em away an’ git a new pair.”

Some questions you’ll find answered in Great Women of the Oil Fields:

How DID they drill for oil way back then? How were oil derricks built, and why were dozens of them placed so close together at a site?

What was an oil boom like? What makes oil so valuable, and how could its discovery change a person’s fortunes overnight?

Why was the famous Spindletop gusher in Texas given the infamous nickname “Swindle-top?”

How did J.B. Bridges save the life of Nancy Journeycake’s grandfather – and how did that allow him to drill his first successful oil well?

What’s the secret that ties Queenie to Margaret Bridges and could change her life forever – but she’ll never tell?

What part did the thunderous roar of an oil gusher play in the “roar” of the “Roaring ‘20s?”

During World War II, how did Oklahoma and Texas oil men help British Spitfires outmaneuver Nazi fighter planes? And how did we almost lose the war?

You’ll never look at the history of the oil industry the same again!

Certainly not dull and boring!

Note: We’re told “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house” after Laurette’s premiere performance of Great Women of the Oil Fields during Bartlesville, Oklahoma’s centennial celebration in 1997. Employees and retirees of Phillips Petroleum expressed their deep appreciation to Laurette for “bringing the story to life.”

 

The slogan of Mrs. Willis’ company, DoveTale Productions aptly describes her work,

“Uniting the Past with the Present – Dramatically!” 

Since 1993 Laurette's shows are

Available for funding from:

Available to work with

Indian Education-funded projects

(JOM, Title programs and

Cherokee Nation Co-Partner Program).