So Big (1924)

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COLLEEN MOORE IN AN APPEALING ROLE
Star of "So Big" Gives Greatest Performance of Career

"SO BIG." First National Photoplay. Author Edna Ferber. Director, Charles Brabin. Length 8,501 Feet.

CAST AND SYNOPSIS

Selina DeJong	Colleen Moore
Dirck DeJong	Ben Lyon
Purvis DeJong	John Bowers
Klass Pool	Wallace Berry
August Hemple	Jean Hersholt
Julie Hemple	Charlotte Merriam
Pauline Storm	Rosemary Thelby

Reduced to poverty by the sudden death of her father, Selina DeJong becomes a school teacher in a Dutch settlement on Chicago's outskirts. She weds a dull youth named Purvis, who finds all his relaxation in hard work. Finally, labor on the farm kills him. Selina is left with her baby boy to face the world as best she may. For his sake she works doggedly, runs the farm, sells the produce, educates him, sees him grow to manhood, recognized as a successful architect. Then a Mrs. Storm vamps the son. He is about to elope with her when Selina desperately intervenes. The husband appears, threatens a divorce suit which will ruin young DeJong, but yields to Selina's pleadings. Her mother-love saves the youth.

THE versatile talent of Colleen Moore has never been so successfully demonstrated as in the principal role of "So Big." The film is an artistic triumph is its leading lady, whose characterization of the long-suffering Selina from girlhood to premature old age is marvelously appealing. Also it is charged with remarkably effective atmosphere and well photographed.

The feature's box office value depends chiefly upon how the star's admirers will greet her transition from the saucy, bright napper roles with which she has heretofore been identified. They may resent the startling change, quite regardless of the fact that Miss Moore gives them what is undeniably her greatest dramatic performance up-to date. And if they do -- the picture is doomed to financial disaster so far as the average theater is concerned.

The story, a fiction-market best-seller, is entirely a study in personalities and the scenario follows the original plot closely. It is sombre in tone, with scant comedy relief, developing a compelling, pathetic portrayal of a mother's love for her boy from babyhood, until he reaches the "so big" stature of a man. Up to this point the tale revolves against the drab background of Selina's early struggles, the father's death, her marriage to a dull clod of a Dutch farmer, his death and the young widow's fight for a livelihood, all replete with the spirit of determined loyalty and tragic self-sacrifice.

Then comes the big dramatic moment when Selina sees son Dirk about to ruin his reputation by eloping with a married woman. This is the only flash of exciting action in the nine reels, the remainder being mostly heartache, toil and worry. But the emotional strength of Selina's intervention and rescue of her boy must be conceded.

Director Brabin has faithfully reproduced the styles, colors and settings of the last century. Besides the star's wonderfully effective work as Selina, credit must be given John Bowers for a fine delineation of the unimaginative Dutch farmer who digs himself to death. Wallace Beery is immense as Klass Pool but Ben Lyon painfully stiff and stagey as the grown-up Dirk.

The photography is exceptionally fine, and there is a meticuolous care given to the various details of setting and atmosphere that lend a tone of sincerity to the photoplay.

Feature Colleen Moore. If her fan-following will stand for their favorite's fading into old age, "So Big" may please 'em. It would be well to make this clear in your exploitation, for fear of a comeback.

-- Exhibitors Trade Review, January 31, 1925, page 49

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Colleen Moore in "So Big"
A "Best Bet" on 1925 Card

FIRST NATIONAL'S picturization of Edna Ferber's "So Big,&auot; in which Colleen Moore is starred, has developed, in the course of production, into such a remarkable picture that it will easily take rank among the features of the year. Is is scheduled for release December 28. It is a leader in First National's pace maker group for teh current season.

Director Charles Brabin has made of "So Big" a production that is epic in character and scope, worthy to be ranked, in the opinion of First National executives, along with the finest of the screen visualizations of the great periods of American history. It differs from other productions coming under this classification ("Abraham Lincoln," "Sundown," "Secrets," "The Birth of a Nation," "Little Old New York" and "The Covered Wagon") in that its historical background serves merely to emphasize the animating force of Miss Ferber's novel, that of mother love.

"So Big" is a story of the period in American history when the horse was beginning to give way to the automobile, the dawn of the gas age in American locomotion. The action takes place in Chicago and on a truck farm in the environs of that city. In its depiction of the costumes, manners, vehicles and mode of that day "So Big" has been kept perfectly accurate by Director Brabin, so that the result is historical in accuracy to past manners and customs without any historical character or event in it.

The role of Selina Peake DeJong, shown from young girlhood to old age, gives Colleen Moore her greatest role, and one to which she has adapted herself amazingly. Word has already gone out from Hollywood that a new Colleen Moore will be revealed when this production is screened.

The supporting cast includes Ben Lyon, John Bowers, Wallace Beery, Gladys Brockwell, Jean Hersholt, Sam DeGrasse, Ford Sterling, Dot Farley, Rosemary Thelby, Phyllis Haver, Charlotte Merriam and Henry Herbert.

-- Moving Picture World, November 29, 1924, p. 360

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With Colleen Moore, Sam DeGrasse, John Bowers, Wallace Beery, and Ford Sterling. Directed by Charles Brabin. First National.

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This work (So Big (1924), by First National), identified by Bruce Calvert, is free of known copyright restrictions.

Last Modified Fri Mar 06 2026