Janet Gaynor’s Role in Absorbing Love Story

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 232, 2 October 1935, Page 11

Janet Gaynor’s Role in Absorbing Love Story

“THE FARMER TAKES A WIFE” ON THE WAY. (State: Screening Saturday Next.) Filmgoers have been looking for tho superlative romance, those 'who seek drama, and those who prefer

attventure will find all these elements combined in the simple, human, down-to-earth story of Fox Films’ “The Farmer Takes a Wife.”

Tk picture stars Janet Gaynor in one of the most absorbing and tender love stories it has been her privilege to play; it exhibits for the first time the superior talents of the screen’s new romantic sensation Henry Fonda, and it tells a magnificent tale in a style that will leave you troubled and strangely happy at its close.

“The Farmer Takes a Wife” deals with the turbulent glamour and vitality of the Erie Canal scene in tho early ISfiO’s, and draws a dramatic conflict from the love of a boy fresh from the farmlands for a girl who was attached to the water life. /-

Fonda is the boy who takes to the canals to earn enough to buy his own farm. Tho life of the canal throws him into contact with Janet Gaynor, cook for canal boater Charles Bickford, and although he recognises their intrinsic differences, Fonda cannot help falling in love with her. She returns his love. Their love story-merges into tho story of the canal people as tho story proceeds. There are gusty humorous episodes of tho skipper with a carko of pigs, the preacher who turns dentist, spells of community singing in which tho principal renders racy American ballads, brawls, fist fights and liquor bouts.

During all this period, Fonda is trying to woo Miss Gaynor away from the canal, trying to show her how the despised steam trains have doomed the canals. But it is not until after the harrowing climax in which Fonda gives Bickford, the bully of the waterways, a taste of his own medicine, that she will listen to his pleadings.

Fonda, who originated the rolo ho plays in the New York stage production brings a shy wistfulness, a courage and sensitivity to his portrayal, which have been missing from the screen for too long. Ho is an admirable acting companion for the superlatively fine Miss Gaynor.