Paul Green Movies

This is the third time around for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. The action takes place in urban Texas instead of the traditional setting in rural Iowa. This film version contains five extra songs written exclusively by Richard Rodgers. Box office results were adequate at best, and movie going public deemed this version the least interesting of the three. The youth audience was lured by the casting of Ann-Margaret, Pat Boone and Bobby Darin. Alice Faye returned to the big screen after a sixteen year absence as Melissa Frake. Tom Ewell plays her husband, Abel. The plot finds a family traveling to Dallas for the Texas State Fair. Singing commences on the ferris wheel, the merry-go-round and in other locales. The only real action is the anticipation of a drag race between Wayne (Pat Boone) and the carrot topped, malevolent motorhead Red (Edward "Tap" Canutt). ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Carolina, a melodrama directed by Henry King, follows a young woman's attempt to restore a southern plantation back to its pre-Civil War glory. Joanna Tate (Janet Gaynor), originally travels from her home in Pennsylvania to the plantation in order to collect her deceased father's belongings. Though he didn't own the plantation himself, he had worked there as a farmer for a number of years. Once she arrives, Joanna (Gaynor) finds that the actual plantation owner, Bob Connelly (Lionel Barrymore), is a Civil War veteran who, despite his dogged determination to return his farmland to what it was before the war, has fallen to alcoholism. Least expected, however, was the love that would develop between Joanna and the plantation's handsome young heir, Will Connelly (Robert Young). Joanna and Connelly (Young) eventually marry, and the farm is successfully restored through their dedication and hard work. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

The 1933 State Fair was the first of three film versions of the Phillip Stong bestseller. Some consider it the best of the three because of its stricter adherence to the source material and the presence of star Will Rogers. Rogers plays Abel Frake, patriarch of a family whose individual members are affected by the upcoming Iowa State Fair in various fascinating ways. Abel hopes to enter his prize hog Blue Boy and win the blue ribbon. His wife Melissa (Louise Dresser) wants to enter her mincemeat in a food competition, his son Wayne (Norman Foster) wants to get even with a carnival sharpster who'd outsmarted him during the last state fair, and daughter Margery (Janet Gaynor) just wants to get out of the house for a little fun. The parents win their prizes (though it looks for a while that Blue Boy will succumb to a serious illness) the children have brief romances (one happy, one cautionary), and everyone goes home a little wiser for the experience. Footnote: Fox studios offered to butcher Blue Boy and sell his meat to Will Rogers, but Rogers declined, noting that he wouldn't feel right eating his costar. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Henry Harrison Kroll's novel Cabin in the Cotton was an attack on wealthy southern landowners who exploited their sharecroppers. While the landowners still don't come off too well in Warner Bros.' film version of Kroll's novel, the film tries to avoid stepping on powerful toes, even composing an opening-title disclaimer pointing out that both sides of the issue had arguments in their favor. Richard Barthelmess, 23 going on 45, plays a sharecropper's son who wants to improve his lot with a college education. Land baron Berton Churchill advises Barthelmess' father to get those "silly ideas" out of our hero's head, lest he forget his place. Bette Davis plays Churchill's seductive daughter, whose influence with daddy enables Barthelmess to rise to the position of Churchill's bookkeeper. When Barthelmess discovers that Churchill is cooking the books, Churchill counters that Barthelmess wouldn't have any chance to advance himself without the largess of the landowners. He even tries to get Barthelmess to inform on those field workers who plan to organize a union. A potentially bloody confrontation between the workers and management is quelled by Barthelmess, who manages to wangle compromises from both sides. The only thing Barthelmess loses is Davis, but he is compensated by the affections of longtime sweetheart Dorothy Jordan. Nobody really remembers the plot complications in Cabin in the Cotton; to most viewers, the film is memorable only for Bette Davis' classic line "Ah'd love to kiss ya, but ah jest washed ma hair." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide