So Big

Jane Wyman is an affluent young schoolgirl in late 19th century Chicago whose father manages to lose his fortune and his life in one afternoon. Destitute, she is forced to accept a job as a school teacher in a nearby farm town, moving in with the family of local farmer Roland Winters.

His son Richard Beymer doesn't attend school because he needs to work on the farm, but Wyman realizes he has a taste for literature and music. She gives him private lessons after school, and soon he's developed a crush on Wyman. But Wyman has fallen for local farmer Sterling Hayden and they soon marry.

Wyman and Hayden have a son whom she nicknames "So Big" due to his rapid growth. She realizes he shares her interest in the arts and starts planning a better future for him. But Hayden dies and Wyman ends up having to run the farm herself. She faces hardships, but eventually turns the farm around and earns enough growing fine asparagus (!) to send So Big, now grown up to be Steve Forrest, off to college to become their shared dream ... an architect.

Forrest graduates and becomes a draftsman at an architecture firm, but impatience with his lack of advancement and prompting from his society girlfriend leads him to abandon his dream and become a salesman. Wyman is crushed, but Forrest earns piles of money and is happy until he meets artist Nancy Olson, whom he loves, but she dumps him because he isn't an architect.

This adaptation of Edna Ferber's much adapted novel is Robert Wise's first foray into a genre he will return to many times in the 1950's ... decidedly middle-brow, literate melodramas. This one is extremely hard to find, probably because it's not terribly good and has very little to offer modern audiences.

Wyman plays the main character from schoolgirl to old lady without changing a single aspect of her performance. Hayden is lively and virile as the big, dumb farmer, but he's in far too little of the film to really bring it to life. It's a strange, very episodic melodrama that seems to want to push the idea of artistic values over commerce while very clearly being an example of the latter over the former.

If you like terrific acting, triumphs over adversity, laced with plenty of life's heartbreaks, So Big is what Hollywood does best for you. Contrived? A bit. Overly Theatrical? guilty as charged. Gripping melodrama from beginning to end? You bet. It's all relationship-driven so men who disdain "chick-flicks" should leave this one alone. All others should find it as wonderful as I do.

Selina (Jane Wyman) is a happy student in a pricey girls' boarding school. Her world is turned upside down when her father dies leaving her alone and broke. She is reluctant to accept any help. She becomes a teacher in small rural town. She nurtures student Roelf, and he develops a crush on her. She marries farmer Pervus De Jong (Sterling Hayden) and they have a son, Dirk nickname So Big.

There is a bit of sentimental hokum and melodrama in this film. It's calling back to an olden times and olden ways. It's trying very hard to push the ideals of substance over money. Through it all, Jane Wyman maintains its sincerity. When she leaves the screen, the movie struggles. She is the biggest One of them all. This movie wants to be an old time character epic and I want it for Jane. She pulls it through the finish line. Her reunion with Roelf is ten times more compelling than all of Dirk's drama.

Remarkable soaper gets bravura lead performance by Jane Wyman. The scenes in New Holland are excellent with young Richard Beymer a standout as a student who has a crush on Wyman. Steve Forrest is excellent as Wyman's son. Martha Hyer is a bit out of her league as the would-be vamp seeking to lead Forrest astray. But, why quibble? The production values are first-rate, the writing is excellent, and the score is magnificent.

Despite the above cited drawback, this Edna Ferber story of a mother's love with that stifling title, SO BIG, seems aimed at the tear ducts to give JANE WYMAN another chance to show how well she can age from young woman to maturity to old age with a nice array of expressions and changes of hairdo and make-up.

She's really the best thing about SO BIG. It's story is a simple, even trite saga of a woman who wants all the best things for her son, especially since she has to rear him single-handedly once her husband (farmer STERLING HAYDEN) dies. Hayden gives such a persuasive performance that once he's gone, the picture suffers from his untimely death and the remaining scenes never achieve the same intensity of the earlier ones. Brief performances from dependable players like NANCY OLSON, MARTHA HYER and a very young RICHARD BEYMER help sustain interest in the long-winded plot.

There is an appropriately agreeable score by Max Steiner to emphasize the soap suds and the usual dramatics, but this somehow misses the mark as what should have been a superior vehicle of its kind despite having all the trimmings.

STEVE FORREST, as Wyman's "so big" son, has moments when his resemblance to real-life brother Dana Andrews is remarkable. Unfortunately, his role is poorly written without giving him the chance to show much acting range.