MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 500 titles—from the silent era through the ’90s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Of Mice And Men (1939, 106 minutes)
John Steinbeck was a Stanford man who could have taken the easy way out by finishing his degree, making a lot of money and ignoring the decaying human condition all around him. Instead, he penned two epic works portraying the Okie migration to California during the massive “dust bowl” crop failures of the 1930s: In Dubious Battle and The Grapes Of Wrath.
Written between those two in 1937, Of Mice And Men is a smaller story about a pair of depression-era drifters. Lennie is “a few bricks short of a full load,” as they described it in those times. Short and wiry, George is the brains of the outfit, constantly getting his oversized companion out of scrapes with the law. As the movie version of the book begins, the two are running full-tilt through an apricot orchard near Weed, Calif., chased by a dozen angry men toting shotguns. George (Burgess Meredith) and Lennie (Lon Chaney, Jr.) leap into an irrigation canal and hug the near bank, overgrown with skunk cabbage.
Safe at last on the bus traveling south, the pair can take a deep breath. “George, where are we going?” asks Lennie. “Ya forgot already, didja?” replies his pal. “I tried not to forget, honest I did,” mumbles Lennie. “Do ya remember going in to Johnson & Beatty’s in Frisco and them giving us the bus tickets and work cards?” asks George. Lennie begins frantically searching his pockets. “I ain’t got my work card. I musta lost it,” he says. George chuckles, “I got ’em both in my pocket. Ya think I’d let you carry your own work card?”
George suddenly gets up to find out just where they are. “How far to Number 3 Ranch?” he asks the driver. “Didn’t I just take you guys to Weed?” the driver replies. “Just answer my question!” George snaps. “OK, don’t get sore. It’s just a little stretch down the road,” says the driver, stopping the bus. Fifteen minutes later, the boys come upon a sign that reads: “Ranch No. 3 Ten Miles.” George explodes, “Ten miles more on the hottest day we’ve had!” He picks up a rock and slings it with the accuracy of a Dizzy Dean fastball at a billboard across the road that reads: “Next Time Try The Train.”
The sun sets before the boys can make it to the ranch, so they bed down for the night. As they dine on canned beans, George tells Lennie how it’s going to be someday. “We’re gonna have a vegetable garden, some chickens and a rabbit hutch. And in the winter, we’re gonna light a big fire in the stove and sit around and listen to the rain on the roof.” Lennie’s eyes glisten with joy as he says, “And we’ll live off the fat of the land.”
