God's Little Acre

God's Little Acre is a 1933 novel by Erskine Caldwell about a dysfunctional farming family in Georgia obsessed with sex and wealth. The novel's sexual themes were so controversial that the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice asked a New York state court to censor it. The novel was made into a film of the same name in 1958.

Plot summary

Ty Ty Walden is a widower who owns a small farm in Georgia, just across the border from South Carolina. His daughter, Rosamund, is married to Will Thompson, a worker in a cotton textile mill. Another daughter, whom everyone in the novel refers to as Darling Jill, is unmarried. His son, Buck Walden, is married to the beautiful Griselda. Buck and Griselda live on the farm with Ty Ty, and along with Ty Ty's other (unmarried) son, Shaw.

Ty Ty is obsessed with finding gold on his land. Ty Ty, Buck, and Shaw spend their entire time digging holes on the farm. Ty Ty has promised to donate any profits generated by a 1-acre (4,000 m²) parcel of the farm to the church, but is terrified that gold will be found on "God's acre". So he keeps moving the acre around. Only two African American hired hands, Uncle Felix and Black Sam, do any farming on the property, and the Waldens largely live off loans and what little income Felix and Sam generate.

God's Little Acre (film)

God's Little Acre is a 1958 American film of Erskine Caldwell's 1933 novel of the same name. It was directed by Anthony Mann and shot in black and white by master cinematographer Ernest Haller. Although the film was not released until August 1958, its production schedule is indicated as September 11 to late October 1957.

The film was as controversial as the novel, although unlike its source material there was no prosecution for obscenity. Though both book and film were laced throughout with racy innuendo calling into question the issue of marital fidelity, it was the film adaptation that may have been the more alarming, inasmuch as it portrayed a popular uprising – or Marxist insurrection – in the southern United States by laid-off millworkers trying to gain control of the factory equipment on which their jobs depended.

Philip Yordan was officially given credit for the screenplay, but it was actually by Ben Maddow. Since Maddow was blacklisted for his radical, and suspected, but unproven, Communist activities during the 1950s Red Scare, working without credit was the only way he could successfully submit screenplays. When it was first released, audiences under eighteen years of age were prohibited from viewing what were perceived to be numerous sexy scenes throughout, though in recent decades the film's scandalous reputation has diminished. After decades of neglect, the film was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive under the supervision of master restorer Robert Gitt. As part of Gitt's restoration, Yordan's name was replaced by Maddow's in the main title roll.