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A minor Poverty Row potboiler, "based," according to an onscreen credit, "on Peter B. Kyne's The Joy of Living," Black Gold not only features a rather tedious amount of stock footage of oil drilling, but also two equally tedious songs -- "She Knows Everything" and the title tune -- written by someone sharing a last name with the film's producer, Maurice Conn. Frankie Darro, LeRoy Mason, and pompous villain Berton Churchill are all better than the material, but the supporting cast is generally made to overact by a director, Russell Hopton, who had clearly learned his craft during the silent era.