The Farmer’s Wife ** (1941, Basil Sydney, Wilfrid Lawson, Nora Swinburne, Patricia Roc, Michael Wilding) – Classic Movie Review 12,827

The 1941 comedy drama movie The Farmer’s Wife proves an acceptable if uninspired film run-through of Eden Phillpotts’ theatre blockbuster about a grumpy widowed farmer called Sam Sweetland (Basil Sydney) who seeks a new wife. 

Director Leslie Arliss’s 1941 British sound remake of the Alfred Hitchcock 1928 silent movie The Farmer’s Wife of Eden Philpotts’s hit stage play is a decent record of the show, and a useful vehicle for five excellent quirky acting talents – Basil Sydney, Wilfrid Lawson, Nora Swinburne, Patricia Roc and Michael Wilding.

Director Leslie Arliss’s black and white comedy drama movie proves an acceptable if uninspired film run-through of Phillpotts’ theatre blockbuster about a grumpy widowed farmer called Sam Sweetland (Basil Sydney) who has sad and frustrating experiences with three possible new wives, but then realises that his young maid Araminta (Nora Swinburne), who has been helping him matrimonially, is actually the ideal wife all along.

The warm-hearted movie is certainly pleasant and amusing enough, though the humour is a bit obvious and the film on the creaky, undynamic side. Wilfrid Lawson adds to the laughter tally as the surly farmhand and handyman called Churdles Ash.

Allowances need to be made for its archaic nature… well it’s a while ago, and things were a bit sedate moviewise in those days.

It was produced by Associated British Pictures Corporation at Welwyn Studios when the company’s Elstree Studios were requisitioned for wartime use.

It is not widely shown any more but happily Talking Pictures TV have revived it.

Arliss was still to make his greatest impression directing the incredibly popular The Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady.

The cast are Basil Sydney as Samuel Sweetland, Wilfrid Lawson as Churdles Ash, Nora Swinburne as Araminta Grey, Patricia Roc as Sibley, Michael Wilding as Richard Coaker, Bunty Payne as Petronell, Enid Stamp-Taylor as Mary Hearne, Betty Warren as Louisa Windeatt, Viola Lyel as Thirza Tapper, Edward Rigby as Tom Gurney, Kenneth Griffith as George Smerdon, A Bromley Davenport as Henry Coaker, Jimmy Godden as Sergeant, Gilbert Gunn as Pianist, James Harcourt as Valiant Dunnybrigg, Mark Daly as PC Chave, Davina Craig as Susie, Hilda Bayley as Mrs Rundle, David Keir as Auctioneer, Patrick Ludlow as Curate John Salew as Mr Rundle, and Olga Slade in minor role.

The Farmer’s Wife is directed by Norman Lee and Leslie Arliss, runs 82 minutes, is made by Associated British Pictures Corporation, is released by Pathé Pictures, is written by Norman Lee, Leslie Arliss and J E Hunter, is shot in black and white by Claude Friese-Greene, is produced by Walter C Mycroft, and is scored by Guy Jones.

Release date: 24 January 1941.

Prolific English author, poet and dramatist Eden Phillpotts (4 November 1862 – 29 December 1960) wrote many books with a Dartmoor setting. One of his novels, Widecombe Fair, inspired by an annual fair at the village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor, provided the scenario for The Farmer’s Wife. First staged in Birmingham in 1916, its London premiere was in 1924. By 1926 when Laurence Olivier went on tour in the lead role, the play had already been performed 1,300 times.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,827

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