The Southerner

A harsh, unsentimental view of rural life in the Southern United States, THE SOUTHERNER stars Zachary Scott as Sam Tucker, a sharecropper who has spent his life picking cotton. Taking to heart the dying words of his Uncle Pete (Paul E. Burns), he decides to buy a small piece of land and try to make it work as a family farm. The scrap of land he's able to afford needs a great deal of work, but his wife Nona (Betty Field) and his children Jot (Jay Gilpin) and Daisy (Bunny Sunshine) pitch in. Their misanthropic neighbor, Devers (J. Carroll Naish), allows them to use water from his well, but in the winter, when Jot becomes extremely ill, he refuses to lend them the milk the doctor prescribes. Although the boy survives, Sam finds that Devers's attitude is shared by local grocer Harmie (Percy Kilbride) and others in the mean-spirited little hamlet. Running low on food, Sam contemplates the offer of a factory job, but decides to hold out until after the harvest. (official distributor synopsis)