The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)

BACKGROUND
 

Chase Manhattan Bank refused to finance The Grapes of Wrath despite its being the best selling book of 1939. Nollen writes that: “Darell Zanuck was informed by the studio board of directors that The Grapes of Wrath was ‘radical … subversive … [and] not suitable to put on the screen’ so the mogul went to the men who controlled the purse strings at Chase Manhattan Bank, the primary backer of Fox Studios.” Zanuck flew to New York and made a personal appeal to the board of Chase but after getting nowhere he implored the chairman to take the novel home and read it before giving a final answer. Though the chairman never got around to reading the book, his wife did and demanded her husband finance the film as a matter of principle.

 

At the time of its release many on the left felt that Ford had watered down Steinbeck's novel. But those reactions have changed significantly over time as the film’s cultural impact grew and it is now seen as one of the best films of all time. Steinbeck himself was very happy with the adaptation which he felt upheld the books pro-labor message and even toned down it's preachiness. It seems typical of the left that they failed to appreciate the lengths that Ford and Zanuck had gone to in order to bring the controversial book to the screen. 

PLOT SUMMARY

A family of evicted Oklahoma farmers sets out for California in their overpacked truck only to be harassed by vigilantes, bullied by union busters and hunted by the law.