Come and Get It **** (1936, Edward Arnold, Joel McCrea, Frances Farmer, Walter Brennan) – Classic Movie Review 7159

Walter Brennan came and got the very first ever Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in directors Howard Hawks and William Wyler’s 1936 movie based on Edna Ferber’s famous novel of love and drama among lumber country folk.

There is very fine work too from Edward Arnold as timber tycoon Barney Glasgow, Joel McCrea as his son Richard and Frances Farmer in two parts as mother and daughter – the two roles of Lotta Morgan and Lotta Bostrom together represent her best ever movie performance.

The ambitious lumberjack Barney Glasgow (Arnold) abandons his saloon girl lover to marry into wealth. But, in an odd, all rather Freudian turn of events, years later Barney Glasgow (Arnold) discovers that he is the rival-in-love for the hand of the daughter of his woman friend from long ago.

Brennan plays Barney Glasgow (Arnold)’s close Swedish buddy, Swan Bostrom.

Also in the cast are Andrea Leeds, Mary Nash, Frank Shields, Edwin Maxwell, Cecil Cunningham, Charles Halton, David Clyde, Charles Unger and Mady Christians.

Richard Rosson directed the logging sequences.

Producer Samuel Goldwyn had to pay a huge $150,000 for the film rights to Ferber’s novel.

Brennan is the first actor to win three Academy Awards and still the only one to win three Best Supporting Actor Oscars. Popular former Brennan won when Academy rules allowed extras to vote for the nominees. His second and third Oscar wins for Kentucky (1938) and The Westerner (1940) led to the Extras Union being stopped from voting.

Frances Farmer (19 September 1913 – 1 August 1970) made her film debut in Too Many Parents (1936) and starred in the musical western Rhythm on the Range (1936) with Bing Crosby, and The Toast of New York (1937) with Cary Grant. For Paramount Pictures, she appeared in Exclusive (1937), World Premiere (1941) and the film noir Among the Living (1941).

Frances Farmer in 1938.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7159

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