The Grapes of Wrath / Tobacco Road

THE GRAPES OF WRATH, 1940, 20th Century Fox, 128 min. Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returns from prison to find his family evicted from their dust-blown, Midwestern farm and packing to head for the deceptively golden promise of California prosperity. Director John Ford brings John Steinbeck’s classic novel about Depression-era poverty and the resultant migration and labor unrest to vivid life.

TOBACCO ROAD, 1941, 20th Century Fox, 84 min. John Ford’s rarely-screened adaptation of the Erskine Caldwell novel and subsequent Broadway play by Jack Kirkland follows the family adventures of Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin), a poor farmer who is about to lose his land. The bawdy, sometimes tragic nature of the novel has been toned down, but Ford manages to faithfully capture the rural milieu of life in the Southern boondocks.