Not Rated | 1h 37min | Drama, Comedy | 1947
Imagine this scene: Neophyte maid Katie Holstrom (Loretta Young) is serving at her first big party at the household of Congressman Glenn Morley (Joseph Cotten). As she weaves her tray through a floor full of well-heeled guests from the Hill, butler Joseph Clancy (Charles Bickford), who’s served the Morleys for 40 years, softly warns, “There’ll be a lot of talk about politics. Just stay out of it.” Katie smiles and nods, “Of course!”
Does she follow that sage advice? In “The Farmer’s Daughter” (1947), the joke’s on us. Director H.C. Potter’s comedy-drama is about a young woman who can’t “just stay out of it.”
Katie (Katrin to her Swedish American farming family) had planned to attend nursing school, but must take up maid duty because she’s been duped out of money that she’d saved up for school. The guests at the party see more than her beauty and spontaneity, both of which win the Morleys over; they see her warmth, her attention to detail, and her common touch. Let’s not forget her sharp eye and ear for politics.
More Than a Maid
When a congressman prematurely dies, Katie’s swelling crowd of admirers urges her to run against a candidate propped up by cronyism and expediency. Her journey tests her trust in politicians, speechwriters, campaign managers, pollsters, and voters, but most of all, herself.Director Potter doesn’t quite explain Katie’s transformation from gullible farm girl to politically astute firebrand, or satisfactorily justify how partisan politicking can ever become bipartisan. Thankfully, he doesn’t allow the subplots of Katie’s bitter electoral campaign, or her blossoming romance with Morley, to overrun the main narrative.
Instead, Potter’s guiding theme here is a woman’s voice, centered around the fact that in a man’s world, she’s able to speak at all. He focuses on how everyone changes the way they look at Katie, based on what she says, how she says it, why she does what she says she will do, and how well she does what she says she will do.
Even in the moneyed Morley mansion, Katie doesn’t hesitate to speak up if someone’s misrepresenting an issue or getting things plain wrong. Never mind if they’re from the Hill, or if it’s even Morley himself.
Her voice bears authority because she’s neither disagreeing for the sake of being disagreeable nor contradicting just to be contrarian. She’s talkative all right, but thoughtful, too.
Potter cheekily shows us Katie’s brush with pomp. She’s fascinated but never overawed.
At one point, Morley is climbing up his grand staircase while his mother, Agatha (Ethel Barrymore), goes up with a chair elevator, buzzer on hand. We see Katie gaping at the spectacle and, in the same shot, a giant mirror reflecting mother and son ascending the stairs. Later we spy Katie’s impish delight as she furtively tries that chair elevator out herself.
Young won a Best Actress Oscar for her spirited portrayal. She’s so fresh-faced here, it’s hard to believe that, at the time, she’d been in films since the silent era.
A Sensitive Screenplay
Potter’s 1947 film was inspired by the 1937 Finnish play (written by Hella Wuolijoki) and the Finnish film “Juurakon Hulda” (directed by Valentin Vaala). Years later it inspired the 1963–1966 Screen Gems TV-ABC sitcom of the same name, built on the same central character but with an altered storyline and unrelated to the 1940 film.Husband-wife screenwriting duo Allen Rivkin and Laura Kerr wrote several screenplays together, but their work on Potter’s movie is exceptional because it offers a model of how women and men can relate to each other with dignity, restraint, and humor, but without always feeling threatened or envious.
When guests acknowledge her presence as a maid, Katie’s more than gracious; when they don’t, she makes them aware of it. If they can’t be bothered to stop talking for a second, even to look at her, she curtly tucks napkins into their lapels and eases her way to the next guest.
Witness how respectfully Morley and Clancy, with all their clout, treat Katie. Or the way her hulking brothers treat their “little” sister. The nearly 7-foot-tall James Arness debuts here, as one of the brothers.
In one scene, Clancy confides in Katie how power is double-edged: When you win some of it, you lose some of yourself. He tells her how he was with the senator when the senator made his first million, and how they’d gone to Washington together. Then he pauses before he says, “Part of us died together.” Bickford was, rightly, nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his masterful performance.
Morley falls for Katie in part because of her crusade against cronyism, her vision for victorious House of Representative candidates to truly represent common voters, not just sponsors and campaigners.
With a name like Holstrom and a thick Swedish accent, Katie personifies the outsider. So Morley liberally offers her tips to subdue the forcefulness in her speeches, and to be more guarded and less open.
In fact, far from shushing her, men like Clancy and Morley end up helping Katie go up the ladder she’s chosen to climb.
It is Katie’s father who gives the definitive lines as he chides both Morley and Katie: “I thought that Katrin was married to the truth. … If you don’t want to fight for the truth, then you shouldn’t be in Congress!” Relevant advice for today.
