God’s Little Acre (1958)

Ty Ty Walden (Robert Ryan) owns a cotton farm that once belonged to his grandfather. Or, at least, it used to be a cotton farm. Ty Ty believes his grandfather buried gold on the farm and has spent the last 15 years digging holes all over the property with two of his sons, Buck (Jack Lord) and Shaw (Vic Morrow). They haven’t found any gold, but Ty Ty refuses to stop trying, even though with all his digging, they haven’t been able to grow anything on the farm in years. The one place he hasn’t tried digging yet is an acre of land he calls God’s little acre, a plot of land Ty Ty has promised that anything that grows — or is found there — goes to the church. But he’s pretty willing to change his mind about where exactly God’s little acre ought to be if he suspects the gold might be buried there.

The quest for gold has taken a major toll on the family. The family is completely destitute and many of his family members are fed up with his ridiculous quest for gold. Meanwhile, Buck is upset that his wife Griselda (Tina Louise) is still in love with her former lover Will (Aldo Ray), but Will is married to Buck’s sister Rosamund (Helen Westcott). Will used to work in a cotton mill, but ever since the mill closed down, he refuses to do any other kind of work and spends much of his time getting drunk. The only one who has anything promising happening is Ty Ty’s daughter Darlin’ Jill (Fay Spain), who has just been proposed to by Pluto Swint (Buddy Hackett), who is running for Sheriff, although she wants to wait and see the results of the election before she says yes.

Ty Ty is so desperate to find the gold, he and Uncle Felix (Rex Ingram) kidnap a Dave Dawson (Michael Landon), a local albino, because they’ve heard they have magical powers for divining gold. When Dave leads them to an area close to the house, they get to work digging yet another hole. But when it becomes clear there’s no gold to be found there, Uncle Felix suggests that Ty Ty either asks his other son Jim Leslie (Lance Fuller) for money or give it up and go back to farming so the family can have some money again. Meanwhile, Will, in a drunken stupor, tries to re-open the cotton mill, with tragic results.

I’ve been wanting to see God’s Little Acre for a while now and I was hoping it would be the sort of movie I’d love, but it somehow missed the mark with me. It’s not a bad movie, but I can’t help but feel like something must have been lost in the transition from novel to film here. I’ve never read the novel, but it’s just a hunch I have that the book did the story more justice. There’s a lot of interesting things going on, but somehow, they just didn’t seem to gel right with me. I didn’t hate anything about it, but I didn’t love anything about it, either; it just fell smack in the middle of the road for me. It pretty much just made me want to check out the original book, instead.