Region: All
MSRP: $21.99
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlingsâ tender, beautiful coming-of-age story
The Yearling was brought to gloriously Techicolored life by Clarence Brown in his 1946 MGM feature, as moving and as engrossing a family saga as has ever been committed to film. With Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman scoring career highs as the parents and Claude Jarman, Jr. an unforgettable Jody,
The Yearling is everything one could wish from a screen adaptation of a prize-winning book.
In the hardscrabble marshlands of 1878 Florida, Penny Baxter (Gregory Peck) ekes out a poor living raising corn, beans, and potatoes with his hardened wife Orry (Jane Wyman) and his eleven-year old son Jody (Claude Jarman, Jr.), the only one of their four children to survive the brutal life of the era. The family must contend with natural disasters like hurricanes and wild animals who invade the farm at the worst possible moments, but they manage to make do with help from feisty neighbors the Forresters. After Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake, a nearby doe is killed for her organs to draw out the poison leaving her faun a helpless forest creature. Jody, who has always wanted a pet of his own, takes on raising the faun as his own project, but as the faun grows, it gets into no end of trouble around the farm risking the livelihood of the family.