Trailer
Plot summary
Before World War I in northern China, an arranged marriage makes O-Lan, a slave at the Great House, the home of the village's most powerful family, the wife of Wang Lung, a young farmer. O-Lan works without complaint, and the household prospers: Wang Lung buys more land, and two sons and a daughter are born to them. While the Great House declines, a drought settles over the region and a famine follows. With the fields failed, Wang Lung weighs his uncle's advice to sell the land for food, but O-Lan refuses. The family leaves for a city in the south, where they beg and steal to stay alive, hoping to earn enough to return home and plant again.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Good Earth (1937)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When MGM looked into making the film in China, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek intervened in favour of cooperation, and permission came with conditions including Chinese government control of shots done there. Nanjing officials then forced MGM to hire a Nationalist general to advise on authentic settings and costumes, and most of that footage was mysteriously lost in shipping and had to be re-shot in California.
- MGM offered Anna May Wong the role of Lotus, but she refused, saying the studio was asking her, "with Chinese blood", to take the only unsympathetic role in a picture where an all-American cast portrayed Chinese characters.
- According to Variety, Anna May Wong was suggested for the role of O-Lan, but Hays Code anti-miscegenation rules required that Paul Muni's character's wife be played by a white actress.
- Before Herbert Stothart and Edward Ward were engaged to provide the music, negotiations took place with Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who made some musical sketches for the score before the plan fell through.
- The Hays office, which supervised every Hollywood script, demanded more than twenty rewrites of the film to eliminate what it found offensive.
- Many of the Chinese characters were played by white actors made to look Asian through yellowface, using make-up techniques developed by Jack Dawn and used for the first time in this film.
