So Big *** (1932, Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Dickie Moore, Bette Davis, Hardie Albright) – Classic Movie Review 2,748

The 1932 movie So Big has the distinction of starring two great movie queens – Barbara Stanwyck, very much the star here, and Bette Davis, who catches the eye in a smallish role.

Director William A Wellman’s 1932 movie So Big has the distinction of starring two great movie queens – Barbara Stanwyck, very much the star here, and Bette Davis, who catches the eye though she is cast in a relatively small role.

Life is hard for Stanwyck’s character Selina Peake De Jong. Her gambler father Simeon (Robert Warwick) dies, she becomes a teacher in Illinois and meets an upcoming sculptor Roelf Pool (George Brent). She falls in love with and marries Pervus De Jong (Earle Foxe), a Dutch farmer, who dies, and she has to look after their son Dirk (Dickie Moore) and farm alone.

The boy grows up to be a ne’er-do-well young man (now played by Hardie Albright) who gives up architecture for stock brokerage and romances an artist Dallas O’Mara (Davis). And then Brent’s character Roelf comes back into Stanwyck’s life.

Wellman directs smoothly and delivers a brisk and cursory remake of a 1924 Colleen Moore-starring silent movie (considered a lost film), with a screenplay by J Grubb Alexander and Robert Lord based on Edna Ferber’s 1924 Pulitzer prize-winning epic novel. Stanwyck is just right as the battler against life’s adversities and the support cast deliver loyal turns.

It was remade again as So Big by director Robert Wise in 1953 with Jane Wyman, Sterling Hayden and Richard Beymer. The story was also made as a short in 1930, with Helen Jerome Eddy.

It was Davis’s second film for Warner Bros (after The Man Who Played God) and the first in which she appeared with George Brent, who starred with her in 11 more films. Davis said about the film: ‘It was a source of tremendous satisfaction, and encouraged me to unheard-of dreams of glory.’

Ad for So Big in Screenland Magazine (1932).

The cast

The cast are Barbara Stanwyck as Selina Peake De Jong, George Brent as Roelf Pool, Dickie Moore as Dirk De Jong as a boy, Bette Davis as Miss Dallas O’Mara, Mae Madison as Julie Hempel, Hardie Albright as Dirk De Jong as a young man, Alan Hale Sr as Klass Poole, Earle Foxe as Pervus De Jong, Robert Warwick as Simeon Peake, Dorothy Peterson as Maartje Pool, Noel Francis as Mabel,  Dick Winslow as Roelf age 12, Lionel Belmore as Reverend Dekker, Olin Howland as Jacob Pogadunk, John Larkin as Jeff, and Elizabeth Patterson as Mrs Tebbit.

So Big is directed by William A Wellman, runs 81 minutes, is made by Warner Bros, is distributed by Warner Bros, is written by J Grubb Alexander and Robert Lord, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, is shot in black and white by Sidney Hickox, is produced by Jack L Warner, and is scored by W Franke Harling.

Release date: April 30, 1932.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2748

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