The Farmer Takes a Wife

Henry Fonda made his screen debut in this filmization of his Broadway success The Farmer Takes a Wife. The story is set along the Erie Canal in the 1850s. Fonda plays a farmer who takes a river job to make ends meet. He falls in love with Janet Gaynor, daughter of a canal-boat cook, who thinks very little of farmers. Nonetheless, Fonda and Gaynor marry, much to the displeasure of canal skipper Charles Bickford, who'd assumed that Janet was his girl. (Verleiher-Text)