So Big!

Showcase for Barbara Stanwyck who gracefully ages from a young woman to a mother in her late 40s. Barbara stands for hard work (on the farm) and the recognition of beauty in life (even cabbages are beautiful). Her understated portrayal shines as one of her best works. Story of her son, (who Barbara said was "So Big" with hands spread wide apart) is that of a privileged offspring who ignores his mother's advice and takes the easy way to money, ignoring the beauty in creativity, and hides his mother's career from society ladies. When he finally meets a good woman (a good Bette Davis) who appreciates someone with "bumps," he reveals his past but it is not bumpy enough to impress her. Instead Bette goes off to Paris and meets with celebrated sculptor George Brent who as a boy had lived with and loved the older Barbara. Interesting portrayal of two contemporary actresses with one playing the part of a woman old enough to be the other's mother and neither obviously updating the other. Good messages, good role models, with Barbara staying down on the farm as a success without having taken the easy road. A quiet gem to inspire depression-era audiences.

My favorite Barbara Stanwyck movie is her turn as a self-sacrificing mother in Stella Dallas. So Big! feels like her audition for her 1937 Oscar-nominated role.

Once again, Barbara is a poor woman who longs for a better life. She gets a job tutoring a wealthy boy, and then marries a poor farmer and starts a family. Her son becomes the light of her life, and she nicknames him "So Big!" because he's her only reason for living. She sacrifices, scrimps, and saves, in order to give him a better chance at life. If you liked Stella Dallas, you'll probably want to rent So Big! on a weekend. It's a Pre-Hays Code film, so there will be some moments when you gasp and ask, "How did they get away with that?" before you remember the release year of 1932. And you'll get to see a young Bette Davis and George Brent, as well as Alan Hale, who joined Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas. While I like the later film infinitely better-because it's hard to compare any film to the tearjerker-this one is fun to watch because it's very obviously a precursor. If you like Barbara, add this to your list!

SO BIG is a lovely little gem that's only problem is it's much too short, just 81 minutes, given the story's scope. Based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by the usually critically underrated Edna Ferber, famed in the era for her epic novels (GIANT), one can blame Warner Bros. for their reluctance to make longer pictures in this era but at least give them credit for filming this tale, it's impossible to imagine this bleak setting being filmed at either at glamorous and elegant MGM or Paramount.

Barbara Stanwyck stars as Selina, a motherless girl who lives a well-to-do existence with her professional gambler father in big city hotels. Despite his rather shady calling, her father has taught her the finer things in life and raised her properly. Her father is shot and killed when she is a young woman over an apparent gambling dispute which leads to having to go to work as a schoolteacher in a small farming community. There she befriends a young preteen named Rolf (the wonderful Dick Winslow in a superb performance) who is forced to work on his father's farm instead of go to school, giving him books and encouraging his artistic endeavors and his dreams of life beyond farm work. Barbara marries a young farmer and gets trapped herself in the hard life of farm work, particularly after she is widowed young with a little son Dirk to raise on her own. Dirk benefits from his mother's sacrifices and becomes a young architect but is bored and impatient and fails to share his mother's love of beauty and a good work ethic that she successfully installed in Rolf.

The cast is generally superb - this is one of Barbara Stanwyck's finest early roles and she is quite moving at times. She has fine support from teen Dick Winslow, whom I don't recall seeing before, and from some generally unnoticed supporting players like Dorothy Peterson as Winslow's prematurely aged mother, Robert Warwick as Stanwyck's loving conman of a father, Earle Fox as the rather good-looking but common man she marries, and Blanche Fredrici as the rich old spinster who pines for Fox herself. There's also a delightful appearance of the much loved character Elizabeth Patterson, dressed to the nines in period costumes as Stanwyck's city landlady and excellent work by a startlingly beautiful young Bette Davis as the young artist the adult Dirk fancies. Alas, the adult Dirk, Hardie Albright, is not particularly good (and there's a particularly bad scene in which he and Mae Madison, as his married paramour, are not able to carry by themselves) but at least George Brent as the adult Rolf is better than normal if not quite capturing the fire, intelligence, and drive Winslow did as the younger Rolf. I'm surprised no one has noticed the young Selina is played by lovely Anne Shirley, who would go on to her greatest fame as Stanwyck's daughter in their classic STELLA DALLAS five years later. Talk about superb casting for a young Stanwyck!!

This story really cries out for a film of a least two hours with it's multi-decade scope, it really jumps years much too often, much too quickly, but still it's a highly satisfying, often quite touching film that's well worth seeing. This movie also makes me want to seek out Ms. Ferber's rather forgotten novel, which surprisingly is still in print.

SO BIG! (Warner Brothers, 1932), directed by William A. Wellman, based on the Pulitzer Prize novel by Edna Ferber, is a story of a woman, a woman named Selina Peake. First filmed as a silent for First National Pictures (1925) starring Colleen Moore and Ben Lyon, this latest edition, which could have been Warners' contribution to their own version to a two hour epic production to RKO Radio's Edna Ferber based novel of CIMARRON (1931), this "passage through time" story, falls short to becoming nothing more than an abridged screen treatment where much of its basic characters and chaptered selections are either discarded or presented for a few brief minutes. The only character of main importance is Selina Peake. Overlooking an off-beat title that has nothing to do with the Jolly Green Giant, this is her story, a story of a woman.

Opening title: "Chicago - in the 80's, booming, prosperous, surging with life - the gateway to the Great West." The five minute prologue introduces Selina Peake (Dawn O'Day, the future Anne Shirley), a motherless child whose father, Simeon (Robert Warwick), is a compulsive gambler but dedicated to his little girl. While dining at the Palmer House, he tells Selina something to remember, "This whole thing called life is just a grand adventure." Moving forward about ten years. Selina Peake (Barbara Stanwyck), having graduated from the Select School for Girls, is best friends with classmate Julie Hemple (Mae Madison). After Peake is shot dead at Mike MacDonald's Gambling House, Mrs. Hemple (Eulalie Jensen), refuses to have her daughter associated with Selina and her father's gambling reputation. Through the kindness Julie's father, August (a character initially played by Guy Kibbee whose scenes don't appear in the final print) secures Selina a school teaching position in a Dutch community for farmers at High Prairie outside Chicago. While boarding in the home of the Poole's, Klaus (Alan Hale), Maartjie (Dorothy Peterson), and three children, their eldest son, 12-year-old Roelfe (Dick Winslow), with a quest for knowledge and talent for drawing, spends most of his time helping his father on the farm rather than acquiring an education. Selina, who finds "cabbages are beautiful," gets an education of her own when learning that fertilizer is dried blood. Roelfe, who has grown fond of Selina, becomes jealous of her marriage to Pervus DeJong (Earle Foxe). Because of his mother's death and father marrying the Widow Parrenburg (Blanche Frederici), Roelfe, who has always hated his existence, leaves home to make something of himself. The recently widowed Selina would do the same thing, seeking a better life for both her and her young son, Dirk (Dickie Moore), whom she affectionately calls "So Big." Move forward twenty years. Dirk, a young man (Hardie Albright), is torn between pursuing his mother's dream of becoming an architect or assuming the advise of the married Paula Storm (Rita LaRoy) by becoming a Wall Street businessman. During the course of the story, Dallas O'Mara (Bette Davis), an ambitious artist, not only enters the scene, but Rolfe Poole (George Brent), a famous artist, returning home from Europe to reunite himself with someone who's been an inspiration in his life.

For Barbara Stanwyck, SO BIG shows how she can be more than just one of the LADIES OF LEISURE (1930), THE MIRACLE WOMAN (1931) or NIGHT NURSE (1931), but an actress going through the aging process from young woman in her twenties to mother in her fifties, who curtsies every time she meets new people. In its present 82 minute format, SO BIG, with so much material crammed into so short of time, is one of those ambitious projects that should have been expanded by more than a half hour to allow more time for viewers to become better acquainted with both characters and story. Yet, even through its tight editing, the pacing is slow and characters undeveloped. Although it's difficult to compare this with the now lost 1925 edition, its easy to compare this with the existing 1953 remake of SO BIG starring Jane Wyman, Sterling Hayden and Nancy Olson. On a personal level, the newest of the three improves over the 1932 effort on a plot developing level leading to a satisfactory conclusion. The similarity of both versions contains that of Selina Peake repeatedly asking her son, "How big is my baby? How big is my boy?" Son replies, "SO Big!" hence the title of the book.

Aside from being relatively known to film scholars as the one where future superstars Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis appear in the same movie, but barely the same scenes, the film itself had been unavailable for viewing for many years, with the possibility of never to be seen or heard from again. It took a cable station such as Turner Classic Movies to bring this long unseen edition back from the dead, making its long awaited television premiere of clear picture quantity on November 18, 1999. In spite of few highlights of interest, and having to wait eternity for the appearance of Bette Davis and George Brent, SO BIG, with Stanwyck's ability to hold audience's attention throughout, still ranks one as worthy of both rediscovery and recognition, even if this story of a woman is not so big. (***)

Edna Ferber's novel of the same title has been brought to the screen in several remakes. This 1932 film, directed by William Wellman, is a curiosity piece in that two of the best screen actresses of their generation appear in the same cast. Although it's clear this was a Barbara Stanwyck vehicle, Bette Davis is seen in a small role.

"So Big", adapted for the screen by J. Grubb Alexander, in this version, is a rather intimate picture where some of the epic aspects of the novel doesn't come into play. It's basically a story of riches into rags back to riches, as Selina Peake, its heroine, sees her fortune change from the high times to almost poverty when her dear father is fatally shot.

Selina is clearly a survivor. She projects a larger than life shadow over everything in the story. Her arrival at High Prairie under conditions she has never seen, makes her stronger. Selina sees beauty in the land that is going to serve as her home. She is a clever woman who inspires others, especially young Roelf Pool, the young boy who seems to be doomed to stay in the land of his ancestors, to strive for greatness.

Barbara Stanwyck makes the most out of Selina. She gives a controlled performance in sharp contrast with other characters she played in the movies. Bette Davis and George Brent, only appears shortly in the film. Alan Hale, Dickie Moore and Hardin Albright are seen in smaller roles.

"So Big" shows a slice of life in America at the beginning of the last century, a world, that alas, is gone forever.