Despite high production costs and an experienced cast of Western veterans, stage actors and future stars, the film was released with little fanfare.

Pegler is trampled to death, and Dixie beats Yancey to the land that he wanted, so he asks Jesse to stay to help him run the paper.

Ten years later, on the occasion of the Oklahoma Wigwam's 25th anniversary, the United States’ entry into World War I is announced.

[3] In 1947, MGM announced an operetta version starring Kathryn Grayson and produced by Arthur Freed,[4] but this did not happen.

[9] For his script, Schulman introduced several characters, including those of journalist Sam Pegler (Robert Keith) and Wes Jennings (Vic Morrow), while removing the Cravats' daughter, Donna and a boy named Isaiah.

"[11] Principal photography was shot in Arizona, most particularly the depiction of the Oklahoma Land Rush,[12] which featured over 1,000 extras, 700 horses and 500 wagons and buggies.

"[11] Mann left the production, and director Charles Walters finished the film but received no screen credit.

"[11] Also, during filming, Anne Baxter, who played Dixie Lee, revealed in her autobiography Intermission that Ford and Maria Schell developed an offscreen romance: "During shooting, they'd scrambled together like eggs.

"[16] Thomas M. Pryor, reviewing for Variety, praised Schell and Ford's performances, and wrote "Although Cimarron is not without flaws—thoughtful examination reveals a pretentiousness of social significance more than valid exposition—the script plays well.

"[17] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times felt the film's opening "makes for a dynamic and illustrative sequence on the screen.

But once the land rush is over in this almost two-and-one-half-hour-long film—and we have to tell you it is assembled and completed within the first half-hour—the remaining dramatization of Miss Ferber's bursting 'Cimarron' simmers down to a stereotyped and sentimental cinema saga of the taming of the frontier.

"[18] A review in Time magazine criticized the film's length, writing Cimarron "might more suitably have been called Cimarron-and-on-and-on-and-on.

"[19] In a letter published in The New York Times, on March 5, 1961, Edna Ferber wrote: "I received from this second picture of my novel not one single penny in payment.

I shan't go into the anachronisms in dialogue; the selection of a foreign-born actress...to play the part of an American-born bride; the repetition; the bewildering lack of sequence....I did see Cimarron...four weeks ago.

"[20] In 1961, the film was nominated for Best Art Direction (George W. Davis, Addison Hehr, Henry Grace, Hugh Hunt and Otto Siegel) and Best Sound (Franklin Milton).