The Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck's 1939 classic, The Grapes of Wrath, traced the story of the Joad family, who had been dislocated from their Oklahoma farm in the Dust Bowl during the Depression and compelled to migrate to California looking for work. Once there, government sponsored migrant worker camps and labor issues challenged their traditional American ideology of isolated individualism.

Below are some illustrations by Thomas Hart Benton created for the souvenir program at the premiere.
Jane Darwell won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayel of Ma Joad. Jane Darwell as Ma Joad
Henry Fonda as Tom Joad Henry Fonda was nominated for Best Actor (won that year by Jimmy Stewart for The Philadelphia Story) for his portrayel of Tom Joad.
Dorris Bowdon (later Mrs. Nunnally Johnson) played Rosasharn. She subsequently played major roles in five other films, including The Moon is Down. Dorris Bowden as Rosasharn
Cast photo  

Since its release in 1940 The Grapes of Wrath is thought to have been shown somewhere in the world every day .

In 1989, when a Congressional committee designated the first twenty-five films as American classics in black and white, The Grapes of Wrath drew the highest number of votes.

Johnson later wrote, "If the picture had come a few years later somebody would undoubtedly have been called up before McCarthy and questioned as to how much gold from Moscow went toward the hiring of Dorris Bowdon and Hank Fonda, et al. The Russians, as a matter of fact, were as much misled in this respect as certain Americans. They stole prints and showed the picture in Russia as a sample of the truth about capitalistic tyranny. But it was quickly withdrawn from circulation when to their horror the mujiks keened with envy. Even people like the Joads owned an automobile!"

Cast photo courtesy of Twentieth Century-Fox.

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