Own the rights?
Back in the old big studio days MGM didn't send their expensive cast and crews out on location if they could possibly keep them back home on the Culver City lot, especially if the story was set in the Arizona desert as this one is. This 1940 studio-bound production is a curiosity: full of phony sound-stage sets pretending to be exteriors, obvious painted backdrops and fuzzy process shots. Ann Southern and Virginia Weilder even have a big sister-little sister talk while walking on a treadmill as a process-shot desert background is projected in the background. No production shot today could get away with all this fakery. On the plus side, the good-hearted screenplay co-written by Mary C. McCall, Jr, president of the Screen Writer's Guild, is one of the few scripts, other than "The Grapes of Wrath," to have dealt sympathetically with the plight of Dust-bowl farm families who moved west in search of a better life.
You may report errors and omissions on this page to the IMDb database managers. They will be examined and if approved will be included in a future update. Clicking the 'Update' button will take you through a step-by-step process.
