1946 movie: "The Yearling"

Mike taped this one on VHS ages ago. "The Yearling" is a wonderful tribute to fathers. The movie is based on a book of the same title by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings written in 1938.

Gregory Peck plays Ezra 'Penny' Baxter. The movie starts with his return from the Civil War in 1878. Ezra wanted to live as far from civilization as possible. He found his retreat in the scrub country of Lake George Florida. There he made a home for himself, wife Orry, played by Jane Wyman and only surviving child: Jody played by Claude Jarman Jr.
There in the scrub country they scratched out a living. With work and planning they could manage their basic needs. Anything beyond their basic needs involved luck and sacrifice.

Remoteness from civilization came at a heavy cost. A doctor might be a day or more away. Shopping also involved a long trip and there was no school for Jody.

Jody grew up an only child. His four siblings were buried on their farm. Jody was lonely and having no playmates; longed for a pet.

Ezra, wanted to delay the day when Jody would have to give up the carefree joy of childhood and accept the hard reality of life: If you don’t work, you don’t eat. If you don’t eat you starve.
It’s not much of a world, but it’s all we’ve got. Ezra Baxter

If you have children you know how hard it is to watch your child experience life’s painful lessons, especially if you are not sure which cost is greater: the lesson or not learning it.
After much contemplation, Ezra decides to let Jody raise an orphaned fawn and spend one carefree summer just being a kid. The whole family must share the consequences of that decision.

If you have children I recommend both the book and the movie. The Yearling is a wonderful read-aloud book. There are many character voices to play with and the unfamiliar can be explained when it is encountered. For the same reasons I highly recommend reading aloud: "Summer of the Monkeys", also by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
I read a chapter of this every day to our son when he was twelve. Mike was soon drawn into this story and we began waiting for him each day before reading the next chapter.

I see "The Yearling" is available on DVD now too.