Home in Indiana

Henry Hathaway's Home in Indiana is a nice unpretentious family film from 1944 that centers on harness racing. Walter Brennan and Charlotte Greenwood adopt troubled youth Lon McCallister and he returns the favor by reviving their equine stables. Jean Haver and Jeanne Crain are on hand to provide a  romantic dialectic for McCallister. Ward Bond is on hand for solid support. Hathaway displays his usual no nonsense craftsmanship and the technicolor lensing by Edward Cronjager is pleasant. Bonnie Cashin's costumes are shown to particular effect in a dance scene where the two female leads get to jitterbug.

The three leads are at the beginning and height of their careers. McCallister never reached the stature of an Alan Ladd or Mickey Rooney and stopped appearing in films after 1953. Crain was a limited performer, but is appealingly wide-eyed and pigtailed here. A hayloft scene with her and McCallister is a nice idyll. June Haver only appeared in fifteen movies and is largely forgotten today, but here Fox was trying to build her into the new Grable. She is adequate as eye candy and gets to show her background as a singer by trilling a few bars as she makes her entrances.

Hathaway's direction is both slack and stimulating. Exposition scenes are a chore to sit through. However, the quick lateral pans that introduce the settings and close-ups of a drunken Brennan's feet convey that Hathaway kept his hand in the game. The film's racial typing is benignly pernicious, but Sam McDaniel and Willie Best are able to add a second dimension to their characters. Hathaway made a number of diverting entertainments that never aspire to artistry.