Trailer
Plot summary
Ezra Baxter, called Penny, and his wife Ora farm near Lake George, Florida, in 1878. Their only surviving child, Jody, is in his pre-teen years and is close to his warm father, while Ora, still grieving the children she has lost, keeps her distance from the boy. When a bear kills a calf and a young pig, the family sets out with the dogs Perk, Rip and Julia. The bear escapes, Penny's shotgun misfires and Julia is badly hurt, so Penny trades Perk for a new shotgun. Tracking hogs the Forresters took, Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake; he kills the snake, then a doe, and uses her liver on the wound to draw the venom. Jody asks to keep the doe's orphaned fawn; Penny agrees but warns the fawn must be freed once it grows up.
Cast
- Joan Wellsas Eulalie Boyles
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Yearling (1946)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before the film was shelved, MGM had begun The Yearling in 1941 with Spencer Tracy set to star as the patriarch and Victor Fleming chosen to direct.
- Director Clarence Brown's drive for perfection meant scenes averaged 20 to 21 takes, and he replaced the city dogs with real hunting dogs to film the bear fight scene.
- The Yearling was shot in the Juniper Prairie Wilderness of Florida's Ocala National Forest, and a hiking trail there, the Yearling Trail, is named after the story and leads to sites where the family who inspired Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's novel lived.
- Herbert Stothart built the film's score from arrangements of Frederick Delius's music, particularly Appalachia: Variations on an Old Slave Song.
