Edna Ferber's timberland drama gives top billing to EDWARD ARNOLD over JOEL McCREA and FRANCES FARMER--but it's Farmer who impresses the most with her dual role, despite scene-stealing tactics from WALTER BRENNAN with a Swedish accent in an Oscar-winning supporting role as Arnold's simple-minded friend.
EDWARD ARNOLD seems strangely miscast as the lumberman with designs on a much younger woman. His relationship with FRANCES FARMER and her immediate attraction to him seems highly improbable, despite the fact that he can give her wealth and security. A more attractive mature leading man as the two-fisted lumberjack would have served the romantic angle of the drama more believably.
Arnold has ambitions to be the richest timberland boss in Wisconsin. The film begins with a series of energetic and visually exciting scenes of timber falling in the forests as the lumbermen go about their vigorous work details. It's an almost documentary approach that gives the story that follows great authenticity, although it's a typically plot-heavy Edna Ferber tale of two generations.
In Wisconsin of the 1800s, Farmer is a saloon gal, Lotta, impressed by Arnold's wealth and improbably falls in love with him. When he runs off to marry a society girl, Farmer turns even more improbably to Walter Brennan as her husband.
Twenty years later, Arnold is a rich man with a wife (MARY NASH) and two children (JOEL McCREA and ANDREA LEEDS). He goes back to visit Brennan and meets his daughter--FRANCES FARMER in a more demure role is the spitting image of her mother, who has died, and her name is Lotta too. She's a sweeter, more refined version of her mother. The plot thickens, in true Ferber style, with Arnold now intent on wooing Brennan's daughter.
Farmer's beauty is reminiscent of Madeleine Carroll's type of blonde loveliness with sculptured cheekbones and fine facial features. JOEL McCREA is rather wasted in what is little more than a supporting role as Arnold's business man son, instantly attracted to Farmer and then realizing so is his father.
Summing up: An oddly interesting tale despite some improbabilities in the story line. Probably the film that best showcases Frances Farmer, the film was co-directed by Howard Hawks and William Wyler.
EDWARD ARNOLD seems strangely miscast as the lumberman with designs on a much younger woman. His relationship with FRANCES FARMER and her immediate attraction to him seems highly improbable, despite the fact that he can give her wealth and security. A more attractive mature leading man as the two-fisted lumberjack would have served the romantic angle of the drama more believably.
Arnold has ambitions to be the richest timberland boss in Wisconsin. The film begins with a series of energetic and visually exciting scenes of timber falling in the forests as the lumbermen go about their vigorous work details. It's an almost documentary approach that gives the story that follows great authenticity, although it's a typically plot-heavy Edna Ferber tale of two generations.
In Wisconsin of the 1800s, Farmer is a saloon gal, Lotta, impressed by Arnold's wealth and improbably falls in love with him. When he runs off to marry a society girl, Farmer turns even more improbably to Walter Brennan as her husband.
Twenty years later, Arnold is a rich man with a wife (MARY NASH) and two children (JOEL McCREA and ANDREA LEEDS). He goes back to visit Brennan and meets his daughter--FRANCES FARMER in a more demure role is the spitting image of her mother, who has died, and her name is Lotta too. She's a sweeter, more refined version of her mother. The plot thickens, in true Ferber style, with Arnold now intent on wooing Brennan's daughter.
Farmer's beauty is reminiscent of Madeleine Carroll's type of blonde loveliness with sculptured cheekbones and fine facial features. JOEL McCREA is rather wasted in what is little more than a supporting role as Arnold's business man son, instantly attracted to Farmer and then realizing so is his father.
Summing up: An oddly interesting tale despite some improbabilities in the story line. Probably the film that best showcases Frances Farmer, the film was co-directed by Howard Hawks and William Wyler.