February 4 movie: The Farmer's Daughter. Loretta Young plays a young Swedish woman who takes a job in the home of wealthy political insiders, and somehow ends up running for Congress herself, against the candidate handpicked by her employers. This was a funny movie with an odd combination of a sweet romantic story and a cynical political story, and a great cast: Ethel Barrymore, Joseph Cotten, Charles Bickford. I heard that they originally wanted Ingrid Bergman to play the Loretta Young character, but Bergman thought that playing a Swedish woman in a light comedy wouldn't be enough of an acting challenge.
Barrymore plays the widowed matriarch, Cotten is her son, and Bickford is the family butler and Barrymore's closest confidant. But here's the weird thing. I've always thought that Bickford and Cotten look a lot alike. So much so that I used to get them confused. So what was the deal with the casting? Was I supposed to think that maybe Bickford was secretly Cotten's father? Because that's what I was thinking the whole time. It put a totally different spin on the movie.
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