Word: joads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...GRAPES OF WRATH Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe adapted Steinbeck's novel of the Dust Bowl into an absorbing three-hour docudrama marked by ruthless unsentimentality about the Joad clan, clinging haplessly and disastrously to folk wisdom and totemic faith in the family...
...Shepard is once again the icon of incorruptibility who refuses to claim the center of a film. Toward the end of Country Shepard's character disappears, with little explanation, in what may be a gentlemanly bow to Jessica Lange, a flinty, landsomely wasted matriarch. Mother ones, meet Ma Joad. -By Richard Corliss...
...Joad, that quintessential Okie, has just told his mother that as long as he stands falsely accused of murder and has to run, he intends to turn his time on the road to good use, as some sort of farm-labor organizer. She cries out in anguish, "How'm I gonna know 'bout you? They might kill you an' I wouldn't know. How'm I gonna know...
...shed the first impression he had made in films like The Farmer Takes a Wife-that of a shy, likable but lightweight piece of homespun-and take on the raiment of authority. Looking back now, we see that there was no one else who could have played Tom Joad, no one else who could do what Fonda did-drain the sentiment and literariness out of that speech with his drawling directness and, in the process, encompass some of what is best in the American character...
...lots of silver streamers?at least a few moguls and a newsreel camera. Someone important might have been there to introduce these two acting legends about to cross paths for the first time. "Alice Adams, meet Young Mr. Lincoln. Mary of Scotland, this is Wyatt Earp. Tracy Lord, Tom Joad. Tess Harding, Mister Roberts. Ethel Thayer, say hello to Norman Thayer Jr. Katharine Hepburn. . .Henry Fonda...