The Green Promise

1949
Approved
1h 33m

IMDb RATING

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Natalie Wood, Walter Brennan, Marguerite Chapman, and Robert Paige in The Green Promise (1949)

After the Matthews family buys a farm, the father suffers a severe injury, which puts his four children in charge. Daughter Deborah and her kid sister Susan take the lead--with help from the... Read allAfter the Matthews family buys a farm, the father suffers a severe injury, which puts his four children in charge. Daughter Deborah and her kid sister Susan take the lead--with help from the handsome local agricultural agent.After the Matthews family buys a farm, the father suffers a severe injury, which puts his four children in charge. Daughter Deborah and her kid sister Susan take the lead--with help from the handsome local agricultural agent.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.5/10

749

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
There is one scene where a young Natalie Wood is supposed to run across a bridge. She was told that the bridge would collapse after she got to the other side, but there was an accident and the bridge collapsed while she was still on it. She broke her wrist and it never healed properly. She always wore a bracelet to hide the lump left behind.

Goofs
When Susan is running home from school and encounters a bull, a moving shadow of a crew member is visible on the ground, lower left of the frame.

Quotes
Reverend Jim Benton: The really sinful man or woman is the one who, through bigotry and ignorant pride, refuses to learn, and calling his ignorance virtue tries by self-made rule and by scorn to keep all others from learning. These are the real sinners. And here is the vilest evil: to feed their ego, to disguise their inadequacies, to hide their quaking fears, they sneer at the new, revile the experimenter and deride the pioneer and then, hypocritically, defend their actions behind the fog-bound fortress of intolerance.

Connections
Featured in Too Young to Die: Natalie Wood - Die Macht der Prophezeiung (2014)

User reviews25

Review

Featured review

6/10

Natalie And Her Lambs

The Green Promise is a commercial for the 4-H clubs which despite the ever shrinking number of family farms there are still enough kids growing up on same to provide a spring of new members. But this film is a time capsule which shows some of the problems of rural life around 1949. A lot of those same problems exist today because the things that Mother Nature can throw at you when you make a living from the land don't change at all.

Walter Brennan plays a serious version of his later Grandpappy Amos McCoy role. He's the father of four children, the grownup Marguerite Chapman and youngsters Ted Donaldson, Connie Marshall and the youngest Natalie Wood. Brennan is old fashioned and stubborn and not willing to listen to advice about new agricultural methods. Especially when they come from smart alecky young county agent Robert Paige. Paige knows his stuff, but he's a bit too sure of himself to suit Brennan and Chapman in the romance department. Of course she comes around in every way.

The star here is young Natalie Wood and she plays the part like a young Margaret O'Brien. In fact when I tuned the film on I wasn't sure I wasn't watching Margaret O'Brien, the only clue that puzzled me was that Ted Donaldson was too old be an older brother for O'Brien. Young Natalie is sweet and engaging and I defy anyone not to empathize with her concern for her young black lambs whom she is raising as her 4-H project.

The kids from 4-H pitch in with helping hands (that is one of the four Hs after all) to save the farm from the elements and the stupidity of man which I won't go into. All in all they're wholesome All American kids and a real advertisement for the group.

And The Green Promise is also an advertisement for the 4-H clubs in the USA. It's a nice family film without great production values and Natalie Wood is exceptional.