Reaching for the Sun (1941) DVD-R

Starring Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, Eddie Bracken, Albert Dekker, Billy
Gilbert
Directed by William A. Wellman


Print: black/white
Runtime: 90 min.
Genre: comedy
Print quality: B
 

Wessel Smitter's semicomic novel FOB Detroit was the source material
for Reaching for the Sun. Joel McCrea plays a North Woods clam digger
who orders an outboard motor for his business. Figuring he'll save
shipping money by picking the motor up himself, he heads for Detroit.
Here he decides to take a job at an auto plant, the better to support wife
Ellen Drew and the couple's baby. Paramount remembered that Joel
McCrea's fans expected a few action scenes, and obligingly included a
sequence in which a jealous coworker tries to kill McCrea with a
grappling iron. Reaching for the Sun is easy to take, though not quite on
the level of Joel McCrea's later work with director Preston Sturges.