The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935)

The Farmer Takes a Wife: Directed by Victor Fleming. With Janet Gaynor, Henry Fonda, Charles Bickford, Slim Summerville. Charming love story set on the Erie Canal in the mid-19th Century. A farmer works on the canal to earn money to buy a farm. He meets a cook on a canal boat, but she can’t even consider leaving the exciting life on the canal for a banal one on a farm…

“I wasnu0026#39;t intending to watch this film when I turned on TCM early this morning to see what was on, but as a classic film buff found it interesting enough to sit down and see. What grabbed my interest was not the hokey, homespun, highly predictable story. It was that unlike most films of itu0026#39;s day, much of the film was shot outdoors with highly mobile and fluid camera-work. The outdoor back lot sets were fairly elaborate, and the scenes at the herou0026#39;s farm were shot on location in a beautiful rural area (Iu0026#39;m pretty sure the same area was used by Fox several years later for Drums Along The Mohawk).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI strongly suspect that the large supporting role played by Slim Summerville was intended for Fox star Will Rogers, who died in a plane crash in 1935.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn the 1930u0026#39;s a high percentage of Fox films were aimed at rural and small town audiences, unlike most of the films of the other major studios. Iu0026#39;ve read that this was because a large percentage of the theaters that Fox owned were in those areas, rather than urban ones.”