Mon grand

My favorite Barbara Stanwyck movie is her turn as a self-sacrificing mother in Stella Dallas. So Big! feels like her audition for her 1937 Oscar-nominated role.

Once again, Barbara is a poor woman who longs for a better life. She gets a job tutoring a wealthy boy, and then marries a poor farmer and starts a family. Her son becomes the light of her life, and she nicknames him "So Big!" because he's her only reason for living. She sacrifices, scrimps, and saves, in order to give him a better chance at life. If you liked Stella Dallas, you'll probably want to rent So Big! on a weekend. It's a Pre-Hays Code film, so there will be some moments when you gasp and ask, "How did they get away with that?" before you remember the release year of 1932. And you'll get to see a young Bette Davis and George Brent, as well as Alan Hale, who joined Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas. While I like the later film infinitely better-because it's hard to compare any film to the tearjerker-this one is fun to watch because it's very obviously a precursor. If you like Barbara, add this to your list!

So Big! (1932)

** (out of 4)

Disappointing adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel about a young woman (Barbara Stanwyck) with big plans who have to put them on hold after the death of her father. She ends up traveling to a small town where she fulfills her dream of becoming a teacher but she then puts this on hold to marry a farmer. After he dies the woman makes her life goal to raise her son the best she can and make sure he has a place in the future. SO BIG! was apparently one of Stanwyck's favorite roles and I think it's easy to see why but the end result is a real mess and never has any spark or imagination. I was really surprised to see how flat the movie was but I think it's safe to say that this material certainly wasn't right for Wellman. I know he worked in many different genres but it really seems like he's struggling to get any of the emotions on the screen and I'm sure sure of this has to do with the screenplay. The screenplay is a major mess because it never really gives the viewer any time to get to know the characters or start to feel for them. The first forty-five minutes of the movie just seem to go on and on and for no reason because at the end of them you realize that everything you've just seen could have been told in less than twenty. The problem is that everything happens so quick that you simply don't have time to connect with any of it. One minute Stanwyck is married and the next thing you know the husband is dead. One moment Stanwyck is going to live her dream of teaching but then that falls apart without any explanation. Stuff happens at various times without any reason so one has to wonder if the film had a lot taken out before being released or perhaps the screenplay was simply trying to capture various aspects of the novel and just came out very sloppy. Another major problem is that Stanwyck ages about a total of forty-years but there's never an added wrinkle to her. The only thing that changes is her hair color and this simply doesn't work because she looks very silly at age 70 or whatever and seeing that she pretty much looks the exact same as when she was a teenager. Stanwyck is good in her role but the screenplay lets her down. George Brent, Dickie Moore and a young Bette Davis have small parts scattered throughout the film. Stanwyck and Davis appear in the final sequences yet they're never shown in the same frame, which should tell you something. SO BIG! isn't a complete disaster but at the same time there's very little to recommend.

"So Big!" has been filmed three times, once before this version (a lost film from the original flapper Colleen Moore) and once after. But this is the treatment that rings true; this is the "So Big!" that really is so big.

Barbara Stanwyck successfully ages from schoolgirl to aged mother in this film. The story is beautiful (based on Edna Farber's novel) and the acting is superb. You can't help but cry at the end! Don't miss an early screen appearance from Bette Davis!

"So Big!" is shown on Turner Classic Movies at times, but make sure it's the Stanwyck version and not the Jane Wyman re-remake. It's worth the effort.

SO BIG is a lovely little gem that's only problem is it's much too short, just 81 minutes, given the story's scope. Based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by the usually critically underrated Edna Ferber, famed in the era for her epic novels (GIANT), one can blame Warner Bros. for their reluctance to make longer pictures in this era but at least give them credit for filming this tale, it's impossible to imagine this bleak setting being filmed at either at glamorous and elegant MGM or Paramount.

Barbara Stanwyck stars as Selina, a motherless girl who lives a well-to-do existence with her professional gambler father in big city hotels. Despite his rather shady calling, her father has taught her the finer things in life and raised her properly. Her father is shot and killed when she is a young woman over an apparent gambling dispute which leads to having to go to work as a schoolteacher in a small farming community. There she befriends a young preteen named Rolf (the wonderful Dick Winslow in a superb performance) who is forced to work on his father's farm instead of go to school, giving him books and encouraging his artistic endeavors and his dreams of life beyond farm work. Barbara marries a young farmer and gets trapped herself in the hard life of farm work, particularly after she is widowed young with a little son Dirk to raise on her own. Dirk benefits from his mother's sacrifices and becomes a young architect but is bored and impatient and fails to share his mother's love of beauty and a good work ethic that she successfully installed in Rolf.

The cast is generally superb - this is one of Barbara Stanwyck's finest early roles and she is quite moving at times. She has fine support from teen Dick Winslow, whom I don't recall seeing before, and from some generally unnoticed supporting players like Dorothy Peterson as Winslow's prematurely aged mother, Robert Warwick as Stanwyck's loving conman of a father, Earle Fox as the rather good-looking but common man she marries, and Blanche Fredrici as the rich old spinster who pines for Fox herself. There's also a delightful appearance of the much loved character Elizabeth Patterson, dressed to the nines in period costumes as Stanwyck's city landlady and excellent work by a startlingly beautiful young Bette Davis as the young artist the adult Dirk fancies. Alas, the adult Dirk, Hardie Albright, is not particularly good (and there's a particularly bad scene in which he and Mae Madison, as his married paramour, are not able to carry by themselves) but at least George Brent as the adult Rolf is better than normal if not quite capturing the fire, intelligence, and drive Winslow did as the younger Rolf. I'm surprised no one has noticed the young Selina is played by lovely Anne Shirley, who would go on to her greatest fame as Stanwyck's daughter in their classic STELLA DALLAS five years later. Talk about superb casting for a young Stanwyck!!

This story really cries out for a film of a least two hours with it's multi-decade scope, it really jumps years much too often, much too quickly, but still it's a highly satisfying, often quite touching film that's well worth seeing. This movie also makes me want to seek out Ms. Ferber's rather forgotten novel, which surprisingly is still in print.

I've always been of the opinion that you cannot make a bad movie from an Edna Ferber novel. Her stories wherever they be set have characters that are larger than life in settings the same. Texas, Alaska, the Mississipi River, Oklahoma her stuff practically writes itself for the screen.

In So Big we have the story of Selina Peake DeJong who goes west as a schoolteacher in a Scandanavian farming community. It's a place for people who work hard with little frivolity in their lives. Education is a luxury, the work on the farm comes first.

Barbara Stanwyck in her first lead in an A budget film, on loan out from Columbia to Warner Brothers plays Selina. It's a challenging role requiring Stanwyck to age 40 years. She marries farmer Earl Foxe and she has a son who eventually grows up to be Hardie Albright. Albright is trained as an architect, but decides to go into a bond selling firm at the entreaties of Mae Madison, wife of the firm's head who has other interests in Albright.

Stanwyck has as much interest in the land as Scarlett O'Hara does in Gone With The Wind. She wants to impart that to Albright and fears she has not.

Bette Davis and George Brent are both in the cast of So Big. It's their first film together. Brent plays the grown son of Alan Hale a neighboring farmer who Stanwyck boarded with when she first arrives and whom she encouraged to take education seriously and pursue his dreams. Davis has a role as an artist that Albright engages for an advertising campaign for his bonds.

In a recent biography of Barbara Stanwyck there was friction on the set as Stanwyck took note of Davis trying to upstage the cast. Bette wanted the lead role herself and probably would have done a good job. It's similar in many ways to what she did in The Corn Is Green. But there was no Davis-Stanwyck feud as their would be with Miriam Hopkins and Joan Crawford. Simply because Davis just didn't have star prerogatives yet.

There was another version of So Big made in the 50s with Jane Wyman in the lead and a silent version that starred Colleen Moore. But you watch So Big and you will be a big Edna Ferber fan immediately.