Pioneer Women

ROSE WILDER LANE  
'Free Land' 
This 1948 episode of Hallmark Playhouse couldn't have a better pedigree—  
the novel Free Land was written by Rose Wilder Lane, 
daughter of Laura and Almanzo Wilder, 
granddaughter of Caroline and Charles Ingalls, 
and a significant figure in her own right.  
Furthermore, it was adapted by another female pioneer, 
radio writer Jean Holloway.  
The best line is spoken when a more experienced frontierwoman 
tells homestead wife Mary, "This is your home now, child."  
Mary responds:  "No, this is exile."  
Listen to Mary, and you'll hear elements that Kathleen Hite 
and John Meston later used—  
prairie grass, wind, loneliness, insanity, etc.  


LAURA INGALLS WILDER  
'The Long Winter'  
Hallmark Playhouse's 1951 radio adaptation 
of Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter is closer to the books 
than the tv show with pretty people and pretty clothes 
(Edward Arnold doesn't even sound handsome), 
but there's that familiar phrase, "Little half-pint."  
And of course, there is wind, snow, and near-starvation, 
defeated by the determination of a family.  
Lurene Tuttle is steadfast as Caroline:  
"We wouldn't do much if we didn't do things 
that nobody ever heard of before."  
In reaction to the profiteering of an enterprising storeowner, 
Edward Arnold as Charles gets to make a rousing speech 
that makes you wonder why Sen. McCarthy didn't 
haul this whole radio production into a committee hearing.  
These thirty minutes will make you want to read the novel.  


EDNA FERBER  
'So Big'  
Four radio adaptations were made of Edna Ferber's So Big, 
the foremost being the 1939 Lux Radio Theatre version 
with Barbara Stanwyck, who is simply excellent as Selina:  
"Oh, sometimes I hate the earth.  It takes and takes, 
until you have no more strength to give.  And what do you get for it?"  
In this version and that of Hallmark Playhouse in 1949 
(starring Virginia Bruce and adapted by Jean Holloway), 
Hite scholars will spot the church sociable, 
with its women-made box lunch suppers auctioned to the men.  
In Lux Radio Theatre's second version in 1954 with Ida Lupino, 
the most poignant scene is the one where a homesteader wife, 
impoverished and prematurely aged by prairie life, 
stares at her past in the newly-arrived Selina Peake, 
and keeps marveling at her youth and pretty clothes.  
Studio One's 1947 version with Joan Blondell 
has the heartbreakingly romantic Roelf rebuking Selina 
for marrying the farmer:  
"He'll make you old!  Like Pa made Ma old!"  
Compared to other multiple radio adaptations of other novels, 
there is such a disparity between these four versions effected by the adaptors, 
that one must do the unimaginable...  read the magical book.  



Copyright © 2011 E. A. Villafranca, Jr.  
All Rights Reserved