OVP: The Yearling (1946)

Film: The Yearling (1946)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, Claude Jarman, Jr.

Director: Clarence Brown

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Gregory Peck, Actress-Jane Wyman, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Film Editing, Juvenile Oscar-Claude Jarman, Jr.)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Gregory Peck: click here to learn more about Mr. Peck (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our month devoted to Gregory Peck in 1946, about the time that Peck was finishing his first run of fame as a leading man.  Peck was a very quick study in Hollywood.  A back injury during a dance class prevented him from serving in World War II (the studio said it was a rowing accident, as it didn't want its handsome star to be skipping his military duty due to a lesson from Martha Graham), but unlike most stars we'll profile this year, he basically jumped straight into leading roles, and had quick success of it.  Though Days of Glory (his first movie) bombed, The Keys of of the Kingdom was a critical success, and won him his first Oscar nomination on only his second film (he'd lose to Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend).  He'd follow that film with two commercial smash hits-The Valley of Decision with Greer Garson, which was the highest-grossing film of 1945, and the well-regarded Spellbound with Ingrid Bergman, which was a huge hit for United Artists, and made the gorgeous Peck into something of a sex symbol.  This leads to The Yearling, which is our movie today, the film that won Peck his second Oscar nomination and was another big hit for the artist, who had just turned thirty & in the course of two years become one of the most bankable stars in North America.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and is the story of the Baxter family: father Penny (Peck), mother Ora (Wyman), and son Jody (Jarman).  Jody is the only living child they have after the others all died young, and Ora struggles to show affection for Jody for fear that he'll also be taken from her.  They live in a cabin in rural Florida, and try to make by with just each other, though Jody longs for a pet since he doesn't have any siblings.  Eventually, after his father kills a doe, he adopts a young fawn whom he names Flag (due to its tail), and loves it to the point where it's a household pet.  But Ora struggles with it, and eventually it becomes too much of a nuisance, eating up their cash corn crop that they were going to plant to buy a well.  Penny orders Jody to kill the deer, but instead he tells it to leave.  Because it's domesticated, it finds its way back to the farm, and Ora accidentally shoots it, injuring it, and Jody is forced to kill it to put it out of its misery (according to Hollywood legend, a young Maureen Reagan refused to speak to her mom for two weeks after watching the film she was so mad at her shooting the deer).  Jody runs away from the farm, but is eventually found and reunited with his family, including his mother who can now show him love, as she realizes that God won't take her final child away from her, as he has reached the stage of being a "yearling" (a term for a year-old deer who can fend for himself).

If that movie reads as Old Yeller, well, it kind of is.  Though Rawlings' book predates Fred Gipson's novel by nearly twenty years, the story of a boy & his dog has aged better in the public consciousness, and it's hard not to see the direct corollaries between the two.  The difference between the movies is that while the 1957 film became a family classic (and a massive hit) for Disney, it did not command seven Oscar nominations.  There's very little evidence in the annals of the Best Picture that "family" films have any welcome there, and this is one of the few movies of its kind to make the cut.  Given that distinction, it's a pity it's not better.  As a whole, the movie works-it's not a bad movie (evidenced by my 3-star rating above), but it's also not special.  The movie looks terrific because the glowing cinematography (conducted by three men, one of the only times the Cinematography Oscar went to three people for one film) kind of blinds you it's so ravishing, but there's very little there (the titular fawn doesn't even show up until an hour into the movie), and I suspect Oscar got soft for it because MGM sank a fortune into the picture (it cost nearly $4 million, which at the time was an exorbitant amount for a movie), and while it earned it back, I have to imagine the studio pushed for nominations for their large investment.

After Cinematography, though, the film's remaining nominations feel a bit at a loss.  I've never been a fan of Jane Wyman, and while she's better here than she usually is (I think she finds a restraint and the natural makeup look allows more expression in her face), it feels like she's always telegraphing to the audience (we get it, you can't show your children love...you don't have to underline it with every sentence).  Jarman, who won a Juvenile Oscar for this film, is from the "overly-expressive" school of child acting that was the norm in 1940's movies.  The Art Direction was good, but hardly inventive, and the editing...the movie is too long, and occasionally feels like it isn't well-organized (particularly the scenes with Jody's "sweetheart" that come out of nowhere).  As for Peck?  Well, Peck has probably never looked better, his sexy, expressive face & lanky frame a perfect fit for a too-short cabin and dewy camerawork, but he doesn't add much here other than being a stoic figure & a playmate of sorts for Jody.  This isn't his best work, or his best Oscar nomination.