Edna Ferber had several of her novels made into films including Giant, Showboat a couple of times and Dinner at Eight among the well known. Come and Get it is based on the Ferber novel adapted to the screen by Jules Furthman and Jane Murfin. I grew up in the area where the story is set. In the story the town is called Iron Ridge but Ferber did her research for the story while staying at the Burton House hotel in the old lumber and mining town of Hurley, Wisconsin on the Michigan border with Ironwood, Michigan. The Burton House was a grand old three story 100 room wooden hotel that President Grover Cleveland once stayed at. It would burn down in the 1940's. In the character name Lotta Morgan she used the actual name of a famous Hurley saloon singer of the 1880's. Actually, the real Lotta Morgan earned her living from something other than just singing in the saloons. She was also an unsolved murder victim whose body was found floating in the river with a hatchet in her forehead. Ferber put together her romantic tale of the north woods and it's many lumber camps. This is a good movie set in the late 19th century. Frances Farmer plays dual roles of mother and daughter in the fourth leading role of her career and maybe her best. She would go on to star in only six more lead roles before being relegated to supporting actress in four more films and then her film career was over. Edward Arnold, Joel Mcrea, Walter Brennan and Mary Nash round out the fine cast. Howard Hawks directed and this was his project until an argument with the studio boss caused his dismissal and William Wyler was called in to finish the film. Excellent Cinematography from Rudolf Maté and Greg Toland. One of the last films of famed costume designer Omar Kiam. Walter Brennan won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in his role of the Swedish logger Swan Bostrom. The first of three career Academy Awards he would win. Come and Get it also received an Academy Award nomination for Edward Curtis for editing which was well deserved being that he had to put together the work of three directors, Hawks, Wyler and Richard Rosson who directed the logging scenes. Farmer should have been nominated for Best Actress but was over looked by the Academy for Irene Dunn, veterans from silent film days Gladys George, Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer and German actress Luise Rainer who won. The studio in promoting this film had Farmer signing the book Come and Get it at autograph opportunities. She once found it exceptionally strange that she would be signing a book she had not written when she was doing a signing at the Bon Marché department store in her hometown of Seattle where she had been fired from a few years before. I've seen this several times in television over the years and it's worth a look. I would give it an 8.0 out of 10.
Review of Come and Get It
