Tobacco Road (film) box office, and it had grossed up to $1.9 million by 1973. Tobacco Road (film) Tobacco Road is a 1941 film directed by John Ford and starring Charley Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy Dana Andrews and Ward Bond. It was based on the novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell, but the plot was rewritten for the film. Studios attempting to acquire the screen rights to the novel date back to 1933. RKO Pictures and Warner Bros. considered buying the rights, the first intending to assign Charles Laughton in the lead role, but were discouraged from doing
Tobacco Road (novel) John Ford, and the storyline was considerably altered. The novel was included in "Life" magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944. "Tobacco Road" is set in rural Georgia, several miles outside Augusta, Georgia during the worst years of the Great Depression. It depicts a family of poor white tenant farmers, the Lesters, as one of the many small Southern cotton farmers made redundant by the industrialization of production and the migration into cities. The main character of the novel is Jeeter Lester, an ignorant and sinful man who is redeemed by his love of the land and his