John Ford's film adaptation of a hit stage play is an uneasy blend of humour and melancholy in which shiftless hillbilly patriarch Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) tries to find the $100 he needs to prevent his disintegrating family from being evicted from their ramshackle homestead. The melancholic undertone eventually cuts through the relentless shouting but the broad characterisations fatally weaken its message.
Review of Tobacco Road
