Tobacco Road **** (1941, Charley Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy, Elizabeth Patterson, Dana Andrews) – Classic Movie Review 6994

Director John Ford’s 1941 Great Depression-era comedy drama film Tobacco Road makes a tasty meal of Erskine Caldwell’s novel of Georgia poor farm folk dispossessed of their land.

Charley Grapewin and Elizabeth Patterson hold centre stage in fairly broad performances as nice but lazy old Jeeter Lester and his put-upon wife, Ada. A bank plans to take over their land for more profitable farming but Jeeter schemes to get some money so they can stay on their dilapidated house on Tobacco Road.

It also stars Marjorie Rambeau as Sister Bessie, Gene Tierney as daughter Ellie May, William Tracy as son Dude Lester, Elizabeth Patterson as Ada Lester and Dana Andrews as Captain Tim. The romantic subplots concerning Dude and Ellie May are less engaging.

Screen-writer Nunnally Johnson uses Jack Kirkland’s play version of Caldwell’s novel, which ran an amazing eight years on Broadway. That allowed them to advertise: ‘ AFTER EIGHT YEARS OF SENSATIONAL STAGE SUCCESS… IT’S ON THE SCREEN AT LAST! . The Broadway play opened 4 December 1933 and set a record for longevity on Broadway when it closed on 31 May 1941 after 3,281 performances.

The film is slightly dulled by being homogenised by the studio’s and the censor’s orders. Tobacco Road had been on the list of banned titles. Following concerns that ‘many religious folk throughout the nation may be offended by the religious aspects’, Ford announced: ‘We have no dirt in the picture. We’ve eliminated the horrible details and what we’ve got left is a nice dramatic story. It’s a tearjerker, with some comedy relief. What we’re aiming at is to have the customers sympathize with our people and not feel disgusted.’

Also to avoid controversy, Fox decided not to film on location in Georgia but to shoot in the studio on closed sets and to have no publicity to help prevent the film from being banned before release. Eventually, the film was only banned in Australia.

Another slight niggle is that the 20th Century Fox boss Darryl F Zanuck insisted on including in the cast his protégée Gene Tierney, who is out of place as Ellie May Lester. Happily, though, lots of members of the Ford stock company are present and correct on parade, including Ward Bond, Russell Simpson, Slim Summerville, his brother Francis Ford, Mae Marsh and Jack Pennick.

Also in the cast are Grant Mitchell as George Payne, Zeffie Tilbury as Grandma Lester, Spencer Charters, Irving Bacon, Harry Tyler, Charles Halton, George Chandler, Charles Trowbridge, Charles Waldron, Dorothy Adams Erville Alderson and John Miller.

Tobacco Road is directed by John Ford, runs 84 minutes, is released by 20th Century Fox, is written by Nunnally Johnson, is shot in black and white by Arthur C Miller, is produced by Darryl F Zanuck, Jack Kirkland and Harry H Oshrin, is scored by David Buttolph, and is designed by James Basevi and Richard Day.

It was originally hoped that Henry Hull would reprise the main role he played on Broadway but Ford insisted that Grapewin was cast as Jeeter after their successful collaboration on The Grapes of Wrath.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6994

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