My Romance with Movies: From the 1930s: Come and Get It

1936 Drama
From The Samuel Goldwyn Company
Directed by Howard Hawks & William Wyler

Starring
Edward Arnold
Joel McCrea
Frances Farmer
Walter Brennan
Mady Christians
Mary Nash
Andrea Leeds
Frank Shields
Cecil Cunningham

There are several reasons to enjoy this old classic but chief among them is watching the best screen performance that beautiful Frances Farmer ever gave or perhaps was ever allowed to give. She is, of course, more famous for her personal life as she came to loathe how movies were made and crashed and burned while Hollywood turned its back on her. It wasn't all Hollywood's fault since Farmer came on like a wounded lioness for years and those who worked with her were concerned about the danger and madness she brought to film sets.

One of the most searing performances from an actress I have ever seen was in 1982 when Jessica Lange played the title role in Frances. The film brought Farmer's life back into the public consciousness and it has largely stayed there.

In 1936 she was still a compliant (well, as compliant as she was ever likely to be), fun to be around and jubilant about getting a dual role in the film that would catapult her to the top of the Hollywood heap.

Come and Get It is the story of an ambitious lumberjack (Edward Arnold as Barney Glasgow) in 1892 northern Wisconsin who looks to become the head of the lumber business in his state. He and feisty saloon singer (Farmer as Lotta) are in love but he walks out on her when he gets the chance to marry the daughter (Mary Nash as Emma) of his boss in order to get a prestigious partnership that will make obtaining his goal much easier.

Lotta, in turn, marries Barney's best friend, Swan (Walter Brennan. Twenty years pass and the old partners have only seen one another briefly once. Barney travels to his former hometown and meets up with Swan again and discovers that Lotta has died but Swan now has a daughter, also named Lotta (and also played by Farmer), who looks just like her mother. In their constant company is Swan's niece, Karie (Mady Christians) who watches over the household and serves as a surrogate mother.

Barney falls in love with Lotta without actually saying so. He puts off his feelings by considering himself more as a rich uncle type although Karie is too wise to buy into that. Barney decides they are all going to move to his hometown where he will put them up in a cottage he owns, send Lotta to school and give Swan a job.

Around the time that Barney decides to put the moves on Lotta, she falls in love with his son Richard (Joel McCrea) who also works for his father. Barney has an acrimonious relationship with Richard already and tends to disregard his fluttery wife but is very close with daughter Evvie (Andrea Leeds). Barney has also never fooled his savvy secretary, Josie (Cecil Cunningham) and she is the one who begins unearthing Barney's secret. The only one who seems out of the loop is Swan.

Barney, used to always getting his way, goes nuts when he walks into a room and catches Lotta and Richard in a romantic clinch. Father and son get huffy and a bit physical and when Lotta screams out to Richard to not fight with his father because he's an old man, Barney is deeply hurt. The film ends with a full screen shot of Barney trying to smile as his eyes well up with tears. He realizes that old adage... there's no fool like an old fool.

Producer Samuel Goldwyn, who had his own studio, had a great eye for stories (particularly classics) and talent. It's not a surprise that he bought Edna Ferber's famous novel that was way ahead of its time. It sometimes seems inconceivable that this film was released in 1936.

Goldwyn was a mega-tyrant who could not get along with most of people he partnered with and Howard Hawks was one of them. He, too, didn't always get on with those he worked with. He was also one who loved to turn classic novels into films and has long been noted for his fast-paced dialogue often in action-adventure films. He was very excited about making Come and Get It but that excitement was short-lived.

Goldwyn didn't permit anyone to tamper with dialogue. He was incensed after being away for six weeks with an illness to learn that sections of the film were rewritten per Hawks' instructions. The two got into a shouting match (nothing out of the ordinary for either one of them) and Hawks was fired. Hawks always said he quit. Goldwyn hired William Wyler who, it's been said, completed approximately the last half hour. Both directors would receive credit.  At the same time, Richard Rosson directed the logging sequences at the beginning of the film and they are terrific.

Barney Glasgow was loud and obnoxious and a bully in the novel and one cannot deny that Edward Arnold filled those shoes quite well. He is entertaining throughout the story. But I have always snickered a little over his casting because of the preposterousness of the chubby, plain-looking actor romancing someone who looks like Farmer... and then again when he takes on a couple of sturdy types in a fight and wins. Oh I'm sure.

Additionally, Arnold was a character actor who rarely played leads and almost never romantic roles. And again while he is entertaining throughout, during the first part of the film he is not as believable in the second part when he's older.

Hawks claimed Frances Farmer was the best actress he ever worked with. Sorry Hepburn and Stanwyck. Farmer would only make 14 other films and again, this was her finest hour. A year later she would make another film with Arnold, The Toast of New York, which I also enjoyed. Cary Grant was in it as well.

The difference in looks between the two characters she plays boils down to hair color. As the daughter (above), her hair is lighter than that of the mother. The daughter is also softer, not as world-wise. Another thing the actress did change was her singing voice as a contralto for the mother and soprano for the daughter. There's a truthfulness to her acting that is wonderfully obvious and put her in good standing in Hollywood and shortly with The Group Theater in New York.

I have wondered why she and Arnold were not nominated for Oscars. Both seem worthy to me.

As the older Lotta, Farmer sings the old Civil War ballad, Aura Lee with the melody playing throughout the film when Farmer, as either character, appears. That melody was borrowed 20 years later for Elvis Presley's recording of Love Me Tender.

Early in his career and not yet the name he would become, McCrea wisely underplays his role as the quiet, intelligent inventor-son. He stands up to Farmer in a funny slapping scene involving a taffy pull and to his father a few times, but his general low-key demeanor is so unlike his father that it serves as the reason for the father's lack of regard.

Here's a chance to see Walter Brennan with teeth. He turns in a credible job as the Swedish best friend, never less than loyal. He not only won the first supporting Oscar ever given for his role here but it was the first of three Oscars he would win for best supporting actor and that record still stands to this day. I always enjoyed Brennan's signature role, the likable but cantankerous old man, but I am not sure he ever deserved one Oscar, much less three. I always heard that in real life he was kind of mean.

That quartet of character actresses, mentioned above, Christians, Leeds, Cunningham and Nash, all contribute brightly to the proceedings.

I was never comfortable with that 20-year lapse in the story. One minute Barney's off to marry a woman we've not yet met and the next moment the two are sitting at a dining room table with two grown children. That would make McCrea, at minimum, around 19... and I don't think so. That lapse could have been filled in with two or three scenes to establish the credentials and behavior of the family unit.

Edna Ferber

Nonetheless, I think this is a gem of a story, highly entertaining and involving and I don't think one can generally go wrong with an Edna Ferber story. Think So Big, Show Boat, Giant, Dinner at Eight, Stage Door... even Cimarron to a large degree and Ice Palace and Saratoga Trunk. As good as I find Come and Get It to be, it is Farmer's luminous image that remains long after the film has ended.

Here are two brief clips. First is the older Lotta singing Aura Lee: