The Farmer's Daughter

Although Loretta Young won her Academy Award playing The Farmer's Daughter she did have to fake an accent for the role of Katy Holstrum. When doing the television series, the producer's had the good sense to hire a natural blond and a natural Swede.

Both came in the person of the lovely and tragic Inger Stevens who was governess to the sons of Congressman William Windom from, where else, Minnesota. Windom's political opinions were kept carefully discreet in the series so we don't know if he was a Republican in the Harold Stassen mode or a follower of Hubert Humphrey's Democrat-Farmer Labor party. Either way he was a good guy which was a switch for him because until he played Dr. Hazlett on Murder She Wrote, he was a villain on the big screen a lot. Congressman Glen Morley on the big screen had been done by Joseph Cotten.

The character of the gruff and kindly butler that Charles Bickford did so well was completely dropped. But Ethel Barrymore's role as a Senatorial widow and mother to Joseph Cotten was taken over by Cathleen Nesbitt. She was a grand and imperious lady who had all kinds of good advice, political and personal.

Stevens made herself indispensable to William Windom and it was inevitable that like in the movie they would marry. Of course that did signal the end of the series after a good run. The Farmer's Daughter was as big a success on the small screen as on the big.