I recently happened upon this Italian poster for John Ford's Tobacco Road (1941), featuring a young Gene Tierney in a seductive pose. It's one of Ford's weirdest films, and coming between things like The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941), it tends not to be remembered very often. It plays like a flip-side of -- or an alternate reality to -- The Grapes of Wrath. Based on a novel by Erskine Caldwell and a long-running play by Jack Kirkland (but reportedly gutted by screenwriter Nunnally Johnson), the film focuses on a group of hillbillies who still occupy their farmland, long after crops have ceased to grow. Charley Grapewin provides some balance as Jeeter Lester, a schemer with a good heart.
But many other performances are shrill and agitating, such as William Tracy as Jeeter's son "Dude" and Marjorie Rambeau as the caterwauling Sister Bessie Rice. Just wait till you witness the sight of sexy Tierney trying to seduce Ward Bond by lounging on the dirty ground, inching toward him and raising dust clouds as she goes. Even more bizarre is one of the movie's final exchanges ("where's grandma?"). Ford's penchant for broad comedy is at its worst here, but at the same time, he also manages some of his most beautiful lyrical passages.
Despite Tierney's odd, sexy role, she went on to an amazing career, in things like The Return of Frank James (1940), The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Laura (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Night and the City (1950), and Advise & Consent (1962).
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