The Farmer's Daughter

Loretta Young won the Best Actress Oscar (in what was one of the biggest upsets in Academy history) for her rather dull role as the titular character in this Dore Schary-produced comedy. Young plays a Swedish-American farm girl who travels to "Capitol City" to study nursing but ends up working as a maid for a Congressman and his politically powerful mother. Joseph Cotten plays the Congressman, who falls for Young's straightforward, no-nonsense ways. She's so outspoken, she ends up running against the candidate Cotten, his mother, and the other party bosses hand-select. The most enjoyable aspects of the movie are  Ethel Barrymore as the powerful mother and Charles Bickford as her loyal butler. These two heavy hitters bring some heft to the otherwise lightweight affair. The political backdrop is somewhat interesting, but director H. C. Potter and screenwriters Allen Rivkin and Laura Kerr can't work the same kind of magic Frank Capra was able to in his equally corny but far more entertaining in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.