The overprotective father, however, didn't expect his new hire's hunky son to be part of the package. Ellen's duties are to consist of chaperoning Post's beautiful daughter Alison (Diane McBain). A typically straightforward and cleanly told effort from director Delmer Daves, it has elements that come across as quaint to a contemporary eye, between its surfeit of overheated teen sexuality and its almost fetishistic romanticizing of tobacco farming, but the effective efforts of the cast's able veterans keep it eminently watchable.ĭaves' screenplay adaptation of the then-popular Mildred Savage novel followed the widowed Ellen McLean (Colbert), determined to provide adequate support for her teenage son Parrish (Donahue), by taking a household position with Connecticut tobacco farmer Sala Post (Dean Jagger). In 1961, Claudette Colbert had been absent from the big screen for six years before signing on for the second-billed mother role in the glossy Warner Brothers soap opera Parrish (1961), the first starring vehicle for boy-pinup-of-the-moment Troy Donahue. As Parrish beats his opponent into abject submission before the watching fieldhands, Judd stands by without raising a hand to protect his son, silently acknowledging that Parrish has won his fight-and Paige. The final showdown occurs when Edgar tries to set fire to Parrish's fields. Parrish is unable to hire fieldhands, who are terrified lest there be reprisals by the Raikes, but he gets unexpected support from young Paige Raike, Judd's daughter, who enlists her schoolmates to work weekends in the fields. Two years later, Parrish returns and leases land from Sala, who has given up trying to fight Judd. Meanwhile, Lucy has become pregnant by Edgar. The ruthless competitive tactics used by Judd and his two sons, Edgar and Wiley, repulse Parrish, and he quits his job and joins the navy. When his mother marries unscrupulous tobacco tycoon Judd Raike, Parrish goes to work for his stepfather. ![]() Almost immediately he has an affair with a farm girl, Lucy, and a short time later he becomes romantically involved with young Alison. Sala, however, resents the handsome young man's presence about the house, and Parrish strikes out on his own as a laborer in the tobacco fields. Widow Ellen McLean and her son, Parrish, arrive at widower Sala Post's Connecticut tobacco farm, where Ellen has taken a position as chaperon to Sala's willful daughter, Alison.
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