Customer Reviews

Come & Get It

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Seeing "Come and Get It" in the 21st century is every bit as sad and heart-wrenching as it was in 1936. That is the test of a classic. The fine directing by Billy Wilder and Hank Hawks still comes through and a cast of fabulous actors includes not only Frances Farmer but also the venerable Edward Arnold, the latterly-famous Walter Brennan and pretty boy Joel McCrea. They all deliver fine performances.

Burly lumberman Barney Glasgow (Arnold) is forced to make a heartbreaking choice. Should he marry Frances Farmer, the woman he madly loves, or marry the lumber company owner's daughter to get the partnership he has dreamed of and earned. He chooses the latter, gets all he has dreamed of, and spends the rest of his life miserable.

Meanwhile Barney's best chum, Svon Bostrom (Brennan) is a gentle and slightly simple fellow who marries Farmer instead. Barney stays away for decades and doesn't realize that his old friend and old flame have begat a daughter (also played by Farmer) who is mom's virtual clone, except more wholesome and angelic. Can and should Barney chuck it all and become a fool for love once he meets her or is he doomed to just be "an old man" and a sugar daddy?

A touching story, indeed, and full of great small performances (like the Pullman Porter and the Band Conductor). Great acting is complemented by a good sense of place and time, and a haunting sound track largely based on civil war romance tune Aura Lee. Yes, the one Elvis stole for 'Love Me Tender.'

In short, a truly great film and a must-see. You don't need to be a Frances Farmer obsessive to find this film delightful!

I first saw this movie at a Frances Farmer film festival at UCLA back in the 1980's. Although I considered myself a classic film buff, I had never heard of her. I was awed by Ms. Farmer's breath-taking dual-role performance. They don't make 'em like that anymore. The supporting cast, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, and Joel McCrea, were also instrumental in making this movie the true classic it is. As noted by other reviewers, unfortunately for Ms. Farmer, apparent mental illness cut short a brilliant film career. A bio-pic of her life, starring Jessica Lange, showed Ms. Farmer's rocky life -- short as it was. For those who have no idea what this movie is about, Ms. Farmer plays a bar girl in a logging town in the late 1800's. She meets Edward Arnold ("Barney"), a brash and savvy logger, with plans to become the boss's partner and marry his daughter (why not -- it would help the plan along). This plan is upset when he meets this tough, yet, angelic bar girl, Lotta. The "throwing the trays" scene is unforgettable after Lotta tells Barney, who has just won a large amount of money on a game of chance at the bar, that the owner plans to have him mugged in order to get the money back. They have a whirlwind romance and plan to marry. He receives a telegram from his boss, who reminds him of his plans. Now Barney must make a difficult decision. Should he marry this girl he's madly in love with and perhaps throw away the opportunity to make partner or marry the boss's daughter for a chance at becoming the richest man in Wisconsin? He decides, leaving his best friend to break the news to her as she is getting dressed for their wedding. Fast forward 20 years. His best friend has married her, they have a daughter, and, after a few years, Lotta dies. The friend persuades Barney to come visit him. When Barney sees the daughter, who is the image of her mother, he falls for her, too. He persuades her to come with him to the big city (with her aunt as chaperon), and tries to seduce her. She understands what he intends all along, yet, she tries to get as much out of him as she can without giving anything in return. After all, this could be her ticket out of the small lumber town she's stuck in. Eventually, she falls in love with his son, Joel McCrea. After a few months, the son realizes what a fool his father has been making of himself, not to mention a nuisance (today we'd call it sexual harrassment), and they almost come to blows at Barney's company's annual picnic. Barney's dream is shattered when Lotta's daughter shouts to his son, "You can't hit him -- he's your father! He's an old man!" The ending of the movie still gives me goosebumps -- I have them now just remembering it -- as we see a sobbing Barney banging the triangle outside to call everyone over for dinner, who now realizes what an old fool he's been and what he's lost: his old love, his wife, the love and respect of his son, and his best friend.

This film resurfaced briefly about 15 years ago when the movie "Frances", detailing the fall of actress Frances Farmer, was released and did so much for the career of Jessica Lange. I saw "Come and Get It" around that time, and while I appreciated the double role played by Farmer, the performance that impressed me most from this excellent movie was that of Edward Arnold. Why so? Because Arnold is a stout middleaged man, but so powerful that he rivets your attention to himself. Arnold plays Barney Glasgow, an ambitious logger who schemes to become the richest man in Wisconsin through the lumber business--partly by planning to marry the boss's daughter. He is almost derailed by a barroom singer, dark wigged Lotta/Frances Farmer. He stays around long enough to earn and throw away her love before setting off to achieve his object and leaving her to marry his sidekick, Walter Brennan in an Oscar-winning role. All Barney's plans come to pass, except that he's not happy in his marriage and has a rocky relationship with his handsome son, Joel McCrea. A trip back to logging country brings him in contact with Lotta's daughter and namesake, blond wigged Frances Farmer. He becomes obsessed with trying to recapture the love he spurned years ago by pursuing the young girl, with serious ramifications for all involved. I'm glad that Edward Arnold, usually seen only in supporting roles as in "The Hucksters", gets the chance to display his full range here in "Come and Get It". He really runs the gamut from bare-knucked fighter to tender lover to distant father to passionate old fool. Few roles offer so much variety to an actor in one movie, and Arnold rings true in every scene. The expression on his face in the final confrontation he has with his son as Lotta makes a crushing remark about his age is dynamite. In my opinion, Edward Arnold really ought to have won an Oscar himself for this superlative performance. I also thought they had a really good idea for this "through the generations" movie: Rather than cast a young man to play a young man at the beginning and then wear old makeup for the rest of the movie, they opted for the opposite approach. Edward Arnold has a little shoe polish in his hair for the first part, and then a title card announces that 20 years have passed and he's now 50. He then proceeds to perform a part that is written for his own age. (This same trick was used a few years ago in "The Mask of Zorro" with Anthony Hopkins to great effect.) Take my advice about this movie and "Come and Get It' as soon as you can.

Hollywood in the thirties was more interested in fluff and pretty faces than dramatics, but eternal outsider Frances Farmer broke the mold by being both beautiful and an exceptionally talented actress, as evidenced by her performance here in two different roles. For the first half of the movie she plays a depressed hellraising "loose woman" down on her luck, with dark hair, a low raspy voice and a sultry manner. In the second half of the movie she plays her own daughter, raised by respectable Swedish immigrants, obedient, innocent, prim and proper, with lighter hair and a softer voice and manner. She also plays against costar Arnold differently, showing a hopeless unrequited love for him as the mother and being disgusted with his brazen advances as the daughter. This is a difficult thing to do, but Farmer manages to pull it off, creating distinct performances so effectively that it appears she is actually two actresses. The rest of the cast appears wooden in comparison. The destruction of Frances Farmer by the psychiatric establishment several years after this movie was made is one of the great real-life Hollywood tradgedies, not only because of the damage done to her, but also because it robbed the public of a star with subline talent and exquisite beauty. The title of this movie has nothing to do with "Badfinger". Remember kids, Frances Farmer got arrested, beaten, raped, drugged, tortured, chewed on by rats, frozen, zapped, and lobotomized for your sins.

"Come and get it," directed by Howard Hawks until Samuel Goldwyn fired him and replaced him with William Wyler, is hokey and I find the overinsistent music grating. Offsetting it are the cinematography of Greg Toland (making it look like a Wyler film), the anti-clearcutting message (any message being famously anethema to Goldwyn!) and two fine performances by Frances Farmer. She appears to have been put forward (by Hawks who replaced the star he had been given with her) as an American boondock Marlene Dietrich. Sometimes she looks like Jessica Lange (yeah, I know the chronology!). She is somewhat too innocent for her first part and too old and knowing for her second, but the camera likes her, and the two parts (one the mother of the other) are very different.

Howard Hawks obviously liked Walter Brennan. Here, in his first (of three) Oscared part and first (I think) Hawks part, Brennan early on is a stereotype Swede, but probably earned his Oscar for the scene in which he has to tell Frances Farmer that Edward Arnold has left by marrying her. He's fine in the latter half of the film, too. Knowing how he would age, it's somewhat disconcerting seeing him skinny and old.

I don't find Edward Arnold at all convincing as one of the boys (even as the dominant one, ruthlessly using them). He _is_ convincing as a magnate and in wooing the daughter of the love of his life, who looks strikingly like her mother, being played by the same actress (Ms. Farmer). His deflation when she tells Joel McCrea he shouldn't strangle his father both because of paternity and because he's an old man is also effective. It seems a Wylerian moment, but Hawks's "Red River" when Montgomery Clift knocks down John Wayne also springs to mind. Hawks alleged that Wyler argued against Hawks being credited, Goldwyn wanted to credit only Wyler, but decided to list both directors (who went on to become more famous than they were in 1936).

The main reason to see this is to see Frances Farmer before her real-life tortures began.

Howard Hawks, who directed this film stated that Frances Farmer was, without a doubt, the finest actress he ever worked with. In a dual role in which she excellently plays both a mother and daughter with honest conviction, Farmer is perhaps even more natural than say Barbara Stanwyck in her playing: she emerges, almost without emphasis, from out of the crowd at Arnold's elbow. He's at one of the gaming tables a lumberman who's just struck it rich and he naturally draws a crowd. When Arnold eyes Farmer, she says in her low voice "Hullo" her mouth crooked while chewing gum - she's an assured dame who doesn't take any baloney. Not a typical Hollywood beauty, the large - boned Farmer was an intellectual individualist who eventually ruined her career because of her egotistical independence which was deemed as mental illness. She was actually committed to institutions for the insane in the forties and her real life became a horror story. Alcoholic and lonely (after being released) she got a job in Eureka, California working as a secretary by day as Frances Anderson. She got away with her anonymity for about a year when a man approached her coming out of a liquor store. He said to her "You're Frances Farmer aren't you?" for reasons unknown to her she blurted out "Yes, I am - how did you know?" he replied "I remember you" and thusly encouraged her to revive her career somewhat. Farmer died of cancer of the throat in 1970. The excellent performance of look - alike Jessica Lange is worth seeing in the 1982 movie biography FRANCES.

This is a great movie classic starring Edward Arnold and Joel McCrea and Walter Brennan. This is where two old friends love the same woman. One marries for riches and prominence the other marries the woman they both love. Times passes and now a daughter is born who looks exactly like his old flame. Edward Arnold tries to court her but his son falls for her. What will be the outcome? Check it out you'll enjoy this one. Also, Walter Brennan gives a wonderful performance.
I hope that they will release on dvd Scudda Who Scudda Hey with Walter Brennan, Jeanne Crain and Lon McAllister anybody listening on this I sure hope so.

as usual, edna ferber books are just too damned spread out to work as fully effective films, but they adapt as pretty good almosts. the first part of the movie, set in a late 1800s logging camp, work much better for me, with frances farmer way more credible as the bar girl than a generation later playing her own daughter. edward arnold is as always great (pleeez, release "diamond jim brady" on dvd!), and walter brennan won one of his 3 oscars in a memorable supporting turn, tho the young joel mccrea (usually a favorite) comes off as a stiff here. yet the inherent problem in any ferber adaptation (see "giant", "show boat", "saratoga trunk", &c.) is theres just too much that needs to be left out. still tho, its fun.

I love this movie and was so thrilled Amazon.com had it online on DVD. Frances Farmer shone so brightly in this film as did Edward Arnold and Walter Brennen. For film buffs this is a keeper and a must. Thank you Amazon.com.

I almost had a caniption fit as I read some of these reviews. Heart-wrenching, a classic? My god, a classic is Birth of a Nation, Dinner at Eight, Mildred Pierce, A Place in the Sun, The Searchers. There is no way you can lump this programme filler with with those master art-works. While the film starts promisingly enough (the verisimilitude of real footage taken of tree logging was both refreshing and surprising amid the staginess of most mid-'30's films), none of the characters are subtle which could be due to the overacting of almost all the performers. Farmer as the girl in the first half of the film is really hamming it and uncomfortable with the characterisation, she is much more effective as the sweet and meek daughter in the second half. However the audience is never given an opportunity to connect with anyone. There is a wall up, not helped by the fact that the main character, Glasgow, is so ugly and repellent: we have no sympathy for him and don't much care what happens to him or anyone in his vicinity. There is absoloutely nothing heart-breaking about Lola's death as we don't see it, infact there is a sharp cut from her marriage to a scene twenty years later in which we discover from one line in a letter read aloud that she died. Not even "Lola" but "my wife twenty years ago." It's as if a large chunk of the movie has been edited out. We don't know how she died or when, apparently some time after her marriage of convenience. Did she commit suicide? After moments of wondering, we are whisked into a typical 1930's upperclass dining room scene, that only serves to make the audience dislike these characters, rendering any emotional involvement through the discovery of Lola's death, impotent. Because of the defects in the acting and directing, it would have been much more favourable to scrap all the emotional characterisation, which comes across as fake, and focus on the action sequences. Perhaps each scene should have been filmed at the logging mills and on location, turning it into an action film instead of a half-baked love triangle. The film can't make up its mind - is it a romance or a buddy movie? The schizophrenic feel of the piece (appropriate considering the leading lady would soon spend a decade in mental institutions) may be due to the fact that there are two directors, one being the superb William Wyler who most likely left the action sequences to the other director and 2nd Unit, and concentrated on Farmer's scenes. Indeed, he captures her strange beauty very effectively (as he did with all his screen ladies) and the scene at the end, she is lit more spectacularly than in any movie scene by any actress. However all this does is highlight the dullness of the movie. This "climax" in which Lola has to choose between father and son, should have left us as the audience riveted. The truth is we don't really care, preferring to be swept away by what she looks like. Contrary to popular belief, beauty, lighting and makeup can only enhance a classic, it can't make one. The fact that she chooses the son might makes some people complain that its cliche, but honestly, the writing and direction is such, that we know this is a foregone conclusion long beofre the first reel is over. However the film still served its purpose for me: I have been fascinated by Frances Farmer ever since I saw the Jessica Lange film, "Frances" and the ghost-written autobiography, "Will there really be a morning?" Both are infinitely more interesting than "Come and Get It" but it was satisfying to put a performance to the myth, as many of her films are unavailable and this is probably her most major movie and role. Compared to Wyler's "Jezebel" two years later, this movie is just a bunch of scenes looped together with a beginning and end but no real middle.