Joanna

About the turn of the 20th Century, Robert Young is the scion of one of those decaying mansions down south, with Henrietta Crossman for a domineering mother and Lionel Barrymore for a befuddled, useless uncle. A Yankee has rented part of the land to raise tobacco, but dies before we get to see him. Instead, his daughter, Janet Gaynor plans to keep on raising the tobacco; shopkeeper Russell Simpson is interested in backing her; he sees the future of tobacco, and so forth.

Of course Young and Miss Gaynor fall in love, and of course Miss Crossman does all she can to foil that passion. Stepin Fetchit is there to annoy everyone, especially me, and Shirley Temple has three lines -- if you look at this to see her, you'd best be patient, as she shows up at the very end.

I don't believe director Henry King was capable of directing a bad movie, but this one, with its outdated motifs, and singing the glories of tobacco, comes pretty close to it. The performances are all excellent, as you should expect from that cast, and Hal Mohr offers his usual impeccable cinematography. At least it has a story that makes sense, a major accomplishment at Fox in 1934. It's one of those movies I would award a split rating to; on a scale of 1-10, a 9 for execution, a three for how badly it has aged. It's a movie for those who have a completist's interest in one or more of the cast and crew.

The Connelly family of "Carolina" lost all of their money in the Civil War. It is never said exactly how they lost their money, but they did retain all of their land and their antebellum mansion. So in present day - 1901 - they are cash poor, land rich. They get by running up bills they can never pay because an ancestor was a Civil War hero, and that still means something here. The Tate family of Pennsylvania is sharecropping on the Connelly land, but then the father dies suddenly, leaving his daughter Joanna (Janet Gaynor) and her two younger brothers to work the land. Mrs. Connelly (Henrietta Crosman) agrees to let the Tates stay and she'll collect the rent when their crop comes in.

But Mrs. Connelly is horrified when her son Will (Robert Young) begins to have feelings for Joanna, ruining her plans to marry Will off to a wealthy Charleston girl and maybe solve the family's financial problems. She thus sends Will on an errand to Charleston, and while he's away, tells Joanna that she's evicting her before she can harvest her crop AND that Will went to Charleston to get married. This would be news to the wealthy girl, who makes it clear in Charleston that she just considers Will a boy toy. Complications ensue.

I am confused by this film on several fronts. Most of all I'm confused by the fact that everybody treats Joanna like she is Ray Consella from Field of Dreams mowing down his cornfield to build a baseball stadium when she decides to plant tobacco. People have been farming tobacco since Virginia was first settled in the 17th century, but, OK, I'll go with this alternative theory of southern farming and say a gal from Pennsylvania was the agricultural pioneer here.

The film does paint a realistic picture of dementia in Will's Uncle Bob (Lionel Barrymore) - He wanders in and out of cogent lucidity. When he's "out of it" he gets into Joanna's personal space, mistaking her for an old lost love. There's actually a story behind this besides Bob's dementia.

Then there is the frank depiction of racism and class boundaries in the post Civil War South. Uncle Bob throws around the word that shall not be named with wild abandon. But then he spots a black servant girl he fancies, and he begins flirting with her. Also, when Mrs. Connelly tells her black servants to get her some flowers, they have no problem uprooting Joanna's entire garden to obtain them. When she objects the servants demonstrate through their language that poor white people are at the bottom of the social barrel and they will take her flowers if they so please. Disney owns the Fox film library at this point, and let me just say that this will NOT be showing up on Disney+, I guarantee it.

"Carolina" is set about 40 years after the beginning of the US Civil War. Despite the South losing and their fortune being completely depleated, the Connelly family clings to the past and their former glory. But they have no money, no credit and no prospects of any of this changing for the better. So, when Will Connelly (Robert Young) falls for a Yankee tenant farmer, Joanna (Janet Gaynor), the family is in an uproar. Does the romance stand a chance?

Let's cut to the chase. The film is about an unpolitically correct as possible. While I hate the notion of enforced political correctness, the history teacher within me (yes, I used to teach history) balks at the film's ridiculous and offensive view of history and black America. In this film, the slaves never left the Connelly plantation because they LOVE life on the farm and adore their former masters! They are fiercely loyal...and even stop by to sing negro spirituals to entertain the Connellys. But it gets worse...Stepin Fetchit (the worst stereotypical act in Hollywood of the lazy black man) is there as well as the N-word. Don't say I didn't warn you. It certainly paints a crazy portrait of the South and idealizes their treatment of blacks...something that simply isn't historically accurate in the least!

So if you ignore the horrible history lesson, is there anything to like about this movie? Well, the two leads try hard and the romance is very nice...even if Robert Young sounds as much like a Southerner as Lassie! An enjoyable film in many ways...but also an incredibly distorted and ridiculous view of the Carolinas circa 1901.