User reviews

I saw this TV movie when it originally aired in 1974. I was thirteen. I had just seen my first Tennessee Williams play ("The Glass Menagerie") at a local repertory theatre and was smitten with his work. My memory is that I watched this and thought it was great. In the thirty-three intervening years I haven't met a single person who has seen this. I've looked for it for years. Yesterday, I noticed a videotape of it in my local library and I borrowed it. It is a very moving, realistic drama of a family of migrant farmers. I am surprised to find I am only the second customer to review this at this webpage. THE MIGRANTS is based on a story by Tennessee Williams and adapted by Lanford Wilson. The authorship alone should be a reason more people would even hear of this, but this is as obscure as can be. Maybe because it was a TV movie, distribution is problematic. But I doubt it. I see that it was nominated for multiple Emmys and didn't get any. Maybe the fact that THE GRAPES OF WRATH covers the same territory so definitively keeps people from separating THE MIGRANTS from Steinbeck's epic (or from Ford's.) I'll give a list of reasons I still find this intriguing: 1) Cloris Leachman gives a performance equal to the one she gave in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. 2) Ron Howard gives the performance of his life. He was indeed right for a Tennessee Williams character. 3) Sissy Spacek, pre-CARRIE, packs a lot of emotion (and sympathy) into a relatively small role. 4) Tennessee Williams 5) Lanford Wilson It's not earth-shattering, but it is a very solid drama which appeals to the viewer's sense of outrage over the treatment of the people who farm the land. For fans of oddity, there is another aspect worth a mention. This is ANOTHER pairing of Ron Howard and Cindy Williams. If you don't count crossover episodes of HAPPY DAYS and LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY (but you do count the LOVE, American STYLE episode which served, essentially, as a pilot for HAPPY DAYS, or an audition for the George Lucas film I'm about to mention) Ron Howard and Cindy Williams appeared together in two pretty big vehicles: The LOVE, American STYLE episode I've mentioned and, of course, the giant hit, American Graffiti. But nobody's heard of THE MIGRANTS.

Unlike today's younger family society that relies far too heavily on the government to put food on their plate (food stamps), a roof over their head (social housing), and a regular pay check (social and medical welfare) this family of nomads, the Barlow family, toiled in farmers fields picking fruit and/or vegetables from daylight to daybreak as they traveled in a caravan with other migrant workers from one farmers fields, to the next.

As much as the work needed to be completed by menial workers who were shunned from actually entering the towns, they toiled in the nearby fields and their foreman would go into town and pick up any supplies that the migrant workers needed and charge them a little more for his services.

This nomadic life still exists for many families, but mainly by immigrant workers who are not afraid of hard work unlike many North American people are today. The film has a stellar cast of A-lister actors and their solid performances are well worth watching. It is a tough life as migrant workers that they had no choice in becoming migrant workers as a family and it is a good reminder for all of us that our lives could be so much worse, so suck it up butter cup and appreciate what we have today.

A solid 6 out of 10 rating

Recommended by a friend, I reluctantly watched this film, dreading the thought of watching familiar actors reenact the Joad family. Instead, I was mesmerized by a life made real by the extraordinary talents of Cloris Leachman and Ron Howard. This IS the Joad family, as they existed in more recent times in the South. The film continues to haunt my thoughts years later.

Lots of low-key, powerful acting. The moments of emotional 'pay off' are built slowly and with great care. Did Ron Howard ever have a better moment on screen then the time he almost escapes the migrant life but finds himself trapped again when a family member dies and he is needed to work and cries out with real anguish "Nothing ever works out!"?

But the real gem of the film? It is the moment when Cloris Leachman 'loses it'. A sadistic sheriff is going to confiscate the family's pitiful but 'illegal' rabbit trap which is the only way they can put some meat on the table. Her authentic and 'full body' hysteria is the equal of her Academy Award winning moment at the end of The Last Picture Show. She literally holds nothing back - in both films it is scary its so good!

A young Sissy Spacek plays Ron Howard's sister and Cindy Williams (of Laverne and Shirley fame) is natural and delightful as Ron's girlfriend. The sets, people and detail are realistic and not 'prettied up'. When I look at all the crap on DVD, why can't they give this a decent treatment? Who wrote this? LANFORD Wilson, famous playwright and he used a TENNESSEE WILLIAMS short story as the basis - meeting and working it out with Tennessee!

Acclaimed TV-movie from CBS features Ron Howard as the eldest child in a gypsy-living, crop-picking family who dreams of his independence, guiltily planning for the day when he can make a life for himself in the city--far away from the long, sweaty days out in the fields. Lanford Wilson adapted the short story by Tennessee Williams, showing us the hardships behind this caravan of migrating workers who pick up and go from one crop to the next in the southeast. Still, with such attention to the milieu, one feels the character content comes up short. Wilson and director Tom Gries spend so much time telegraphing us that one of the workers is sick, we have nothing much to look forward to except his demise (and the burden this will place upon matriarch Cloris Leachman). Meanwhile, Howard's relationship with factory-line worker Cindy Williams (reunited from 1973's "American Graffiti") is sketchy--and it comes as a surprise to learn later that she's 'underage'. Emmy-nominated Leachman performs her role without affectation or vanity, and her wry way with a line of dialogue (neither saint nor sinner) ultimately makes the film worth-seeing, although it isn't an emotional or touching picture, as it was undoubtedly meant to be. Wilson and Gries haven't shaped the characters with care, introducing us to them within a flurry of activity. The effect is off-putting, and the finale--a hopeful question mark--doesn't begin to resolve the central family's issues.

As a senior at an all-boys Jesuit high school, we the entire student body were required to watch this. It was part of the school's relentless insistence that we in all ways should be Men for Others.

I've remebered this film ever since as my awakening awareness of the poor.

This movie was filmed at various locations in Cumberland County, New Jersey, where I've lived my whole life. I was five years old when this movie was filmed. I remember going with my parents one time to see the cast and film crew shoot a scene in a field near where I grew up. After the filming concluded, the cast signed autographs for fans at the local fire hall. It was all really great having Hollywood come to a small town like ours.

Cloris Leachman is the matriarch of this family, that travels wherever the work is. When it's spring, it's time to be here to pick that, Or, if it's fall, we go south. Sissy Spacek, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Ed Lauter, and David Clennon costar in this TV movie that is painfully real and is based on a Tennessee Williams story. Bad luck seems to find them and they are always behind the eight ball with no sign of change in sight. Cloris Leachman is a standout and is totally in character. It's amazing just how much she is immersed in her role, looks-wise and in terms of desperation of her situation. And, it's interesting to see Ron and Cindy paired together, before being in American Graffiti and Happy Days together. This may be disturbing for some, but it is one TV-movie that should never be forgotten.