This section of our website discusses young actors depicting pioneer and rural Americana. Our focus? Rural life and values. Claude Jarman, Jr. is our first honoree.
Claude's film work began as Jody Baxter in MGM's The Yearling, released December 16, 1946. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings penned this novel of farming in the Florida scub country during the late 1870s. Claude later appeared in another Rawlings-inspired film entitled The Sun Comes Up (1949). His character, Jerry from the orphan home and county farm, befriends a grieving widow played by Jeannette MacDonald. The film features Lassie, America's favorite collie, gathering cows and "traipsin' about" as dogs and farm boys used to do.
The list of family films from the farm is not extensive. One's notable: Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) starred Edward G. Robinson, in a refreshing departure from his gangster roles and appearing with child stars Margaret O'Brien and Jackie "Butch" Jenkins. "Vines" featured scenes and matters familiar to rural folks: the barn burns to the ground, prized Jersey cows are lost, the neighbors rally.
Shenandoah (1965) with James Stewart opens in a farm setting during the War Between the States and includes a full stable of favorite character actors including Paul Fix, Strother Martin, George Kennedy, and Harry Carey, Jr. Phillip Alford appears as one of the boys. Young Alford made his debut in To Kill a Mockingbird (1963) alongside Gregory Peck, the male lead in The Yearling. Despite "Mockingbird" and the good reception of his Disney boy-and-his dog television film, Bristle Face (1964), Phillip left the industry in 1972, with just four television films after Shenandoah to his credit.
Friendly Persuasion (1956), a film similar to Shenandoah featured Richard Eyer as little Jess, son of Gary Cooper's character. Eyer shared a freckle-faced mug with "Butch" Jenkins and was the darling and staple of television fare from the early Fifites into the mid-60s. He's remembered here as providing comic relief, battling a bad-tempered goose skulking about the farmstead. Last known whereabouts? Teaching 3rd grade somewhere in California.
Malevolent geese, heroic dogs, magnificent horses, and farms or ranches blend and were the grist for child actor mills. Such as Kevin Corcoran, teaming up with Tommy Kirk, a Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer, for five different motion pictures including the familiar classic Old Yellar and a sequel, Savage Sam. Where the Red Fern Grows (1974) introduced Stewart Petersen to audiences as a backwoodsy twelve-year-old who raises and trains Dan and Ann, two loyal coonhounds. A promising beginning for young Petersen, but he didn't seem to find material worthy of his ability with later frontier epics. His career essentially ended in 1981 with Rivals, the story of a family forced to leave its sheep ranch in Wyoming and migrate to suburban California.
That the Lassie films and My Friend Flicka are still revered and sought-after is heartening. It seemed back then Hollywood fulfilled parental expectations by instilling values and virtue through animals. Family value films used to sell and horses were often the vehicle. Lon McCallister appeared in such fondly remembered works as Home in Indiana, The Story of Seabiscuit, The Boy from Indiana plus the sheep dog tale (set in Scotland) Thunder in the Valley, and the menacing, The Big Cat, locale southern Utah. Green Grass of Wyoming was another of these but with Robert Arthur in the Lon McCallister role.
Or dogs helped tell the tale. National Velvet's Elizabeth Taylor bracketed that 1944 classic with Lassie Come Home (1943) and Courage of Lassie (1946), films that still "hold up" today. She maintained a lifelong friendship with Roddy McDowell who starred in the first Lassie film. The early Lassie films were not set in America but were solidly popular. And, likely, no discussion of dogs, farm films, and country kids would be complete without mention of Brandon de Wilde's work in the widely acclaimed Good-bye, My Lady (1956) a dog story with Walter Brennan, one of the regular "old-timers" in these movies. Brandon is always associated with Shane, of course. And his devotion to his grandfather Homer Bannon, played by Melvyn Douglas, in Hud is a powerful study in traditional values versus greed and self-indulgence. Hud is ranching without the romance. Grim as Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1940). I don't remember any plucky kids saving the day in that one either.
Lighter fare from the farm and for the family included The Egg and I (1947) which spawned the nine Ma and Pa Kettle features, some of which bore little connection to their rural roots.
Growing up on Canada's Prince Edward Island provided farm settings for Anne of Green Gables and the Avonlea series. Both certainly echo the success and loyalty inspired by Michael Landon's long-running "Little House on the Prairie" dramatizations. Farming and its uncertainties were often key plotlines afflicting the children within these depictions. Family struggles on Spencer's Mountain (1963) also come to mind with Henry Fonda starring as Clay Spencer and James MacArthur as Fonda's Son, Clayboy. "The Waltons" continued this saga on prime time television where kids coping with rural life in the 1930s provided plenty of drama. Earl Hamner, Jr. wrote these accounts from childhood observations. Much in the manner of Willa Cather whose novels O Pioneers!, My Antonia, Paul's Case, and The Song of the Lark often featured young people finding success or failure on the fading frontier. Several Cather works have been adapted for television.
Kids in farm films surged in 1984-85 with the release of Places in the Heart, Country, and The River. O Pioneers' Jessica Lange carried the female lead in Country and fretted over her children's sacrifice and struggles. One of the most heartrending of this era comes from the "Centennial" (1978) series where our honoree, Claude Jarman, portrays farmer Earl Grebe, heading a household trying to survive Colorado's dust bowl and the Great Depression. Since those years, however, the film industry appears disinterested in farming or rural themes unless the plot is rife with truck chases, drugstore cowboys, or "bubba" stereotypes it thinks pollute every corner of "flyover" country. Youngsters are usually absent.
Without the crutch of special effects, will Hollywood embrace today's corporate agribusiness? Will it ladle a thick dollop of thinly-disguised political and social statements into such broth? Can't say, but it appears the effect, the charm, the decency, and the "feelin' good" sensation we once felt from farm films will go a-begging.
Consequently, it's up to us ruralists to honor these great films and performances depicting the raising of good stock, crops, and citizens. So when Claude Jarman's Jody utters essentially his last line in The Yearling-- "We'll make out, Pa. We'll get by"-- we share his father's hope.
For more on this topic, visit: summersrun.wordpress.com. This blog features yesterday's child actors and the background of Summers Run: An American Boyhood.
