So Big
Cast & Crew
Charles Brabin
Colleen Moore
Joseph De Grasse
John Bowers
Ben Lyon
Wallace Beery
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
After graduating from a fashionable finishing school and touring Europe with her father, Selina Peake returns to the United States, where her father is accidentally killed after losing his fortune in a gambling den. Selina is reduced to teaching in a high school in the Dutch community at High Prarie near Chicago. She boards in the farmhouse of Klass Poole, a dull-witted market gardener, and finally marries Pervus DeJong, a poor and backward farmer. She shares the drudgery of her husband's futile life and finds happiness only in their small son, Dirk, whom she calls "So-Big." Pervus dies from the strain of hard work, and Selina is reduced to abject poverty, eking out a marginal existence selling the few vegetables she can raise. When she meets Julie Hempel, an old school friend, Julie's father lends her enough money to begin to farm her land successfully. After eighteen years of stinting and hard work, Selina sees Dirk educated as an architect, but Dirk's promising career is then threatened by scandal. William Storm, the husband of the woman with whom Dirk has been having an affair, threatens to name him as corespondent in a divorce suit. Selina appeals to Storm not to ruin her son's life, and Storm relents. Dirk returns to his true love, Dallas, and Selina looks forward to a serene old age.
Director
Charles Brabin
Cast
Colleen Moore
Joseph De Grasse
John Bowers
Ben Lyon
Wallace Beery
Gladys Brockwell
Jean Hersholt
Charlotte Merriam
Dot Farley
Ford Sterling
Frankie Darrow
Henry Herbert
Dorothy Brock
Rosemary Theby
Phyllis Haver
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Studio executives were reluctant to hire someone known as a comedienne for the dramatic lead character, who ages over 40 years during the story, but Colleen Moore had earned so much for them in the popular movie Flaming Youth (1923) that they could not refuse her the part.
Cissy Fitzgerald was originally cast as the Widow Paalenburg, but in a driving scene she lost control and crashed into a truck. Her facial injuries required 15 stitches and she could not continue, so her scenes were reshot with Dot Farley now playing the role.
Believed to be lost. Please check your attic.
