Come and Get It 1936

Barney Glasgow, Edward Arnold, a ruthless lumberjack foreman in 19th-century Wisconsin, will stop at nothing to become the head of the logging industry. He ends his relationship with Lotta Morgan, Frances Farmer, the saloon singer, and marries Emma Louise Hewitt, Mary Nash, the daughter of his boss Jed Hewitt, Charles Halton, to secure a partnership in his business.

Two decades later, a wealthy Barney and Emma Louise’s son Richard Glasgow, Joel McCrea, strongly object to his father’s practice of destroying forests without planting new trees. Barney visits his old friend Swan Bostrom, Walter Brennan, who married Lotta when Barney rejected her. Swan is now a widower raising a daughter, also named Lotta (also played by Frances Farmer), who bears a striking resemblance to her mother.

Barney finds himself attracted to the girl and, foolishly hoping to recapture the love he abandoned as a young man, offers to finance her education. Complications arise when his son Richard meets Lotta and takes a strong interest in her, which is reciprocated. Barney is jealous.

The narrative threads together ambition, family loyalties, and the tension between progress and the preservation of nature, painting a portrait of a man whose drive to lead the industry collides with the well-being of the land and those around him.