Generational saga tracing the events in the lives of the midwest pioneering Nordholm family, as seen through the eyes of businessman Orin Nordholm Jr., who ages from a youth to an elderly grandfather.
Acting
Paul Muni's physical transformation — method before method was cool.
Direction
Mervyn LeRoy squeezing 60 years into 91 minutes without whiplash.
Production
Pre-code frankness about class resentment that 1934 would've censored.
Director
Mervyn LeRoy
Paul Muni
Orin Nordholm Jr.
Aline MacMahon
Anna Nordholm
Mary Astor
Virginia Claffin Nordholm
Donald Cook
Richard Nordholm
Jean Muir
Selma Peterson / Granddaughter Selma
Guy Kibbee
James Claffin
Mickey Rooney
Otto Peterson as a Child
Patricia Ellis
Natalie Clifton Nordholm
Theodore Newton
Paul Nordholm
Margaret Lindsay
Jennifer Nordholm
Gordon Westcott
John Nordholm
Henry O'Neill
Orin Nordholm Sr.
William Janney
Orin Nordholm III
Douglass Dumbrille
Buffalo Bill Cody
Alan Mowbray
Sir Philip Ivor
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Paul Muni famously hated this role, calling it 'soap opera with a budget' — ironic given he'd win an Oscar two years later playing a similar aging arc in The Story of Louis Pasteur.
Released months before the Hays Code crackdown, this was one of the last films to openly criticize wealth accumulation and show 'ungrateful' children as sympathetic rather than villainous.
US
