So Big! (1932 film)

So Big is a 1932 American PreCode drama film directed by William A. Wellman and starring Barbara Stanwyck. The screenplay by J. Grubb Alexander and Robert Lord is based on the 1924 Pulitzer Prizewinning novel of the same title, without the exclamation point, by Edna Ferber.

Following the death of her mother, Selina Peake Barbara Stanwyck and her father Robert Warwick move to Chicago, where she enrolls in finishing school. Her father is killed, leaving her penniless, and Selinas friend Julie Hemple Mae Madison helps her find a job as a schoolteacher in a small Dutch community. Selina moves in with the Poole family and tutors their son Roelf George Brent. Selina eventually marries immigrant farmer Pervus De Jong Earle Foxe and gives birth to Dirk Hardie Albright, nicknamed So Big, who becomes the primary focus of her life. When Pervus dies, Selina struggles to keep the farm afloat so she can afford to finance her sons education, hoping he will become an architect.Dirk becomes involved with a married woman, who arranges for him to get a job as a bond salesman in her husbands firm, making much more money than as an apprentice architect. Eventually he meets and falls in love with unconventional artist Dallas OMara Bette Davis, but she refuses to marry him because of his lack of ambition. Roelf, now a renowned sculptor, meets Dirk and, learning Selina is his mother, reunites with his former tutor. She is pleased to know her influence helped mold Roelfs character, even as she accepts her own sons weaknesses and disappointments. ........

Source: Wikipedia