The Farmer Takes a Wife

The 30 year old Henry Fonda made his screen debut in this film where he delivers a fairly mediocre performance. His voice is always the same and he's still as stiff and one dimensional as he went on to become as an old man on the screen, but there is activity in his face which redeems him as a screen actor.

When The Farmer Takes A Wife completed its run of 104 performances on Broadway in 1934 it was readily seen as a tailor made property for the number one star on the Fox Film's lot, Janet Gaynor. She specialized in playing sweet and rustic rural girls both on the silent and talking film.

But when Winfield Sheehan could not get either Gary Cooper or Joel McCrea to play the male lead, he took the unusual step of hiring the actor who originated the part on Broadway. And that boys and girls is how Henry Fonda became a motion picture star.

Even with Gaynor getting first billing, the accent here is on Fonda's character, a farm kid who's working on the Erie Canal in its last days because the railroad is coming through. Fonda just wants to earn enough money for good piece of farm land, not unlike Gary Cooper's Sergeant York character before he went to war. He's not into the Canal and what it's meant to the history and economy of upstate New York, in fact the whole Northeast of the USA.

Gaynor and most of the rest of the cast depend on the canal for a living and they don't like progress. But she does like Fonda, prefers him in fact to another Erie Canal boat pilot, Charles Bickford who plays a real lout. You know he and Fonda will tangle.

The Farmer Takes A Wife made Fonda both a stage and screen star, unusual for one work to accomplish both. But on the screen it also type cast Fonda into playing rustics for years. Think about all the roles he had in his early days. His next film was a sound remake of Way Down East, after that he did The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine, Slim, Chad Hanna which was based on a novel by Walter Edmonds just as The Farmer Takes A Wife was. Even his acclaimed parts for John Ford in The Grapes Of Wrath, Drums Along The Mohawk, and Young Mr. Lincoln fall in this same vein.

After almost 80 years, The Farmer Takes A Wife still holds up well as a drama. This is a quintessential Janet Gaynor film and if a young viewer didn't know Henry Fonda became a major star because of this film, they'd guess it right away.

I wasn't intending to watch this film when I turned on TCM early this morning to see what was on, but as a classic film buff found it interesting enough to sit down and see. What grabbed my interest was not the hokey, homespun, highly predictable story. It was that unlike most films of it's day, much of the film was shot outdoors with highly mobile and fluid camera-work. The outdoor back lot sets were fairly elaborate, and the scenes at the hero's farm were shot on location in a beautiful rural area (I'm pretty sure the same area was used by Fox several years later for Drums Along The Mohawk).

I strongly suspect that the large supporting role played by Slim Summerville was intended for Fox star Will Rogers, who died in a plane crash in 1935.

In the 1930's a high percentage of Fox films were aimed at rural and small town audiences, unlike most of the films of the other major studios. I've read that this was because a large percentage of the theaters that Fox owned were in those areas, rather than urban ones.

Bucolic and slow-moving in the '30s Fox tradition, this comedy-drama from a mild Broadway hit preserves what was probably best about it--Henry Fonda, in his film debut--and adds some beautiful photography that may be back-lot but sure looks like the real Erie Canal in the 1850s, complete with morning haze, small-town unpaved streets, and modest canal skiffs. Not a lot happens as would-be farmer Fonda romances a proud Canal gal (Janet Gaynor, feistier and less goody-goody than usual), but it gets by on mood and a gallery of vivid supporting roles, ably handled by Charles Bickford, Slim Summerville, Andy Devine, Margaret Hamilton, and the appealingly un-cute child actress Jane Withers. Victor Fleming brought a lot of feeling to this, and Alfred Newman's scoring, for a change, isn't overemphatic. It's a lazy, outdoorsy movie that builds nicely to an unsurprising, satisfying conclusion.

In 1934, a new actor named Henry Fonda was receiving glowing reviews on Broadway for his performance in the play The Farmer Takes a Wife. Based on the 1929 novel Rome Haul by Walter D. Edmunds, Farmer was the tale of love and conflict along the Eerie Canal during the mid 19th century. Fonda, under contract to Walter Wanger, was called to Hollywood to reprise his role when Fox Film Corp. decided not to use Gary Cooper or Joel McCrea in the role of farmer Dan Harrow for their upcoming film version. Fonda's engaging naturalism and classically humble style in the film version would pave the way for his quick meteoric rise as the great "All-American" star. Declared the top box-office attraction in 1934, Janet Gaynor was wisely as the female lead. The Character Molly Larkins would allow Gaynor to stray a bit from her diminutively wholesome reputation into a meatier role with forthright spunkiness. Character actress Margaret Hamilton reprised her Broadway role as the character Lucy Gurget.

The film's Producer, Winfield Sheehan, had a very successful career producing and supervising such Fox hits as CALVALCADE, STATE FAIR, and CHANGE OF HEART. In 1935 alone, Sheehan would produce a total of five films for Fox. Before the shooting date arrived, the crew completed the one set that was to be used on the film with fastidious period detail. Sheehan would repeat this technique the same year with WAY DOWN EAST, also with Fonda.

Although he never received the great successes or recognition of other directors, Victor Fleming consistently and successfully delivered solid, well-crafted films. His work on FARMER and throughout the 1930's reflected his professionalism and ability to get sensible and honest performances from his actors. He would finish the decade overseeing two of the most memorable motion pictures in Hollywood history, GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ.