45. Edna Ferber — So Big with Dr. Caroline Frick

Edna-Ferber-1920.jpeg

Edna Ferber’s So Big was the top-selling novel of 1924 and it won a Pulitzer Prize, yet it’s little known now! Wildly popular in its day, So Big was adapted for film three times, the second of which (in 1932) starred Barbara Stanwyck and featured a young Bette Davis in one of her earliest roles. Join us for a discussion of the book and the 1932 film with Dr. Caroline Frick from the Department of Radio-Television-Film at University of Texas, Austin. 

Discussed in this episode: 

So Big by Edna Ferber

Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation by Caroline Frick 

Texas Archive of the Moving Image

L.A. Story (1991 film) 

Showboat by Edna Ferber

Cimarron by Edna Ferber

Algonquin Round Table

Anti-Semitism

Yiddish

Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber

Dawn O’Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber

Alan Hale

Skipper on Gilligan's Island

My Antonia by Willa Cather

pre-code Hollywood

MPAA rating system

Barbara Stanwyck

So Big (1932 film)

Baby Face (1933 film)

Cabbage Patch Kid

Dorothy Canfield Fisher and The Home-Maker on Lost Ladies of Lit Episode 9

Warner Bros. 

Cimarron (1931 film)

Academy Award 

Bette Davis

The Farmer’s Wife (1998 PBS documentary)  

Giant (1956 film)

Thomas Hardy

Pulitzer Prize

Colleen Moore

So Big (1924 film)

Transcript
Previous
Previous

46. Let Genius Burn — Louisa May Alcott

Next
Next

Disaster to the Wench with Nina Berry & Brenda Pontiff