Background
Jane Darwell was born on 15 October 1880 in Palmyra, Missouri, United States.
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Jane Darwell was born on 15 October 1880 in Palmyra, Missouri, United States.
Darwell was a stage actress who went to Hollywood in 1914 and played a few parts, among them The Capture of Aguinaldo (14) and Rose of the Rancho (14, Cecil B. De Mille). But she returned to the stage and only reallv entered on a movie career in 1930, when she was fifty: Tom Sawyer (30, John Cromwell); Huckleberry Finn (31, Norman Taurog); Back Street (32, John M. Stahl); Bondage (33, Alfred Santell); Before Dawn (33, Irving Pichel); Only Yesterday (33, Stahl); Roman Scandals (33, Frank Tuttle); The Firebird (34, William Dieterle); Heat Lightning (34, Mervyn Le Roy); The Scarlet Empress (34, (osef von Stemberg); One Night of Love (34, Victor Schertzinger); Journal of a Crime (34, William Keighley); One More Spring (35, Henry King); Navy Wife (35, Allan Dwan); Paddy O'Day (35, Lewis Seiler); Life Begins at Forty (35, George Marshall); The Coun¬try Doctor (36, King); Captain January (36, David Butler); White Fang (36, Butler); Ramona (36, King); Nancy Steele Is Missing (37, Marshall); Slave Ship (37, Tay Garnett); Love Is News (37, Garnett); Dangerously Yours (37, Malcolm St. Clair); Jesse James (39, King); The Rains Came (39, Clarence Brown); Gone With the Wind (39, Victor Fleming); Chad Hanna (40, King); Biigliam Young (40, Henry Hathaway); All That Money Can Buy (41, Dieterle); All Through the Night (42, Vincent Sherman); The Ox-Bow Incident (43, William Wellman); Government Girl (43, Dudley Nichols); Tender Comrade (43, Edward Dmytryk); The Impatient Years (44, Irving Cummings); Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (44, Lloyd Bacon); My Darling Clementine (46, Ford); Keeper of the Bees (47, John Sturges); Three Godfathers (48, Ford); Wagon master (50, Ford); Caged (50, John Cromwell); The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (50, Butler); Surrender (50, Dwan); The Lemon Drop Kid (51, Sidney Lanfield); Fourteen Hours (51, Hathaway); Journey into Light (51, Stuart Heisler); We re Not Married (52, Edmund Goulding); The Sun Shines Bright (53, Ford); Affair with a Stranger (53, Roy Rowland); Hit the Deck (55, Rowland); There’s Always Tomorrow (56, Douglas Sirk); The Last Hurrah (58, Ford); and Mary Poppins (64, Robert Stevenson).
A bar parlor Mother Courage, or a Senate House Ma Kettle, Jane Darwell illustrates that intemperate cross between universality and hodgepodge in John Ford’s work. Her supporting actress Oscar was won for Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (40, John Ford)—a performance and a him that I find as touching as a politician’s apology. And Harwell's “great speech ” about the Joads being the sort of people who go on forever is a slur upon actual stoicism, a piece of Ford’s bigoted optimism, based on a cliché view ol working people offered to them like a meal on polling day. There is something nightmarish about all the Darwell Jowls over which must run tears she has just failed to bite back. It is traditional to describe her success in “warmhearted motherly roles,” but this is dev ouring motherhood, complacent, sanctimonious, and self-conscious.
