Literarary Classics

Dannie Mcnoun spends his days farming, fishing, and muskrat trapping with his best friend and neighbor, Jimmy Malone in Indiana. Fifteen years ago Dannie had asked Jimmy to talk Mary into marrying Dannie. Instead, Mary married Jimmy. Dannie has also noticed that Jimmy's drinking is getting out of control. Indiana classical author Gene Stratton-Porter's tale is filled with an exciting fishing contest, a wild goose chase to make fun of a city-boy, and the awkward tension involved between Dannie, Mary, and Jimmy.

Elnora Comstock and her mother care for their farm and surrounding land very much. When an unexpected tax comes due, and their corn crop is ruined in a storm, the two of them must learn to understand each other or lose what they love most.

Elnora Comstock is the badly abused daughter of Katherine Comstock, who blames her because her father was drowned while on the way home the night she was born. She finds her comfort with Margaret and Westley Sinton, a childless neighboring couple, who help her with her school costs, as does the wealthy Mrs. Parker, who takes an interest in the talented young girl. She meets and falls in love with Phillip Ammon, the nephew of Dr. Ammon, but learns that he is already engaged. The money that Elnora has saved for her college education is stolen, and when Mrs. Comstock goes to retrieve it from a suspect, she also learns of the duplicity of her husband, who had been courting a neighboring woman on the night he drowned. She begs forgiveness of Elnora, and the romance of Elnora and Phillip also begins to flourish.

An orphaned girl is being raised in the Limberlost (timbered swamp in Indiana) by her aunt, who hates her because the girl's mother married the man that the aunt loved. The girl's existence is close to being servitude bondage, and her only companions are the birds and the animals of the forest. She meets and falls in love with a young man whose ambition is to be a lawyer. But her aunt is arranging for her to be married to the wealthiest man in the Limberlost, a drunken, coarse bully.

Based on Gene Stratton-Porter's novel and a remake of Columbia's 1934 "The Girl of the Limberlost" and 1939's "Romance of the Limberlost," this one has altered the kinship who-hates-the-girl relationship from an aunt to her mother. This time, Elnora Comstock (Dorinda Clifton) lives on the edge of a great swamp and collects butterflies to sell in order to go to high school and pay for violin lessons. Her mother, Kate Comstock (Ruth Nelson), hates her, blaming her for her father's drowning death in a quagmire on the way home the night she was born. The years-later revelation that the husband had been off courting a neighbor woman that night brings the mother an attitude adjustment.

Hardhearted Kate Comstock has always resented her daughter Elnora because her husband Robert died in the quicksands of the Limberlost swamp when Elnora was born. Longing for her mother's love, beautiful Elnora is easily loved by everyone else, including neighbors Wesley and Margaret Sinton and the "Bird-Woman" of the swamp, who helps Elnora raise money by teaching her to capture moths and butterflies for sale. Elnora does well in high school, too, and when Philip Amon comes to the neighborhood to recover his health, they fall in love with each other. Unfortunately, Philip is engaged to Edith Carr, a high-spirited but jealous beauty. Elnora seeks to avoid conflict with Edith by staying with Freckles and his wife, who also live in the Limberlost, but when Elnora helps nurse Philip back to health, Edith leaves them free to marry. When Mrs. Comstock learns that her husband had been unfaithful to her with neighbor Elvira Carney, she finally discovers in herself a love for her daughter, and extends her affections enough to adopt the orphaned boy Billy and his dog.

Nick, a 17-year-old on a train journey to find his father, strays off course and finds himself in the Limberlost Forest where he gains employment with a logging company, and learns the values of honesty, integrity, and true friendship.

While wandering in the Limberlost forest with her bear Cubby, young, mischievous Laurie-Lou Duncan meets Freckles, an unemployed orphan who is on his way to the nearby Mr. McLean Lumber Company. Laurie-Lou introduces Freckles to Mary Arden, her pretty schoolteacher, who then introduces him to McLean. At Mary's urging, McLean employs Freckles to guard the vast Limberlost against timber thieves. With Laurie-Lou's help, Freckles learns about the forest and gradually becomes comfortable in his new surroundings. At the same time, Mary gives Freckles botany books to read and, attracted to him, encourages him to visit her at home. After McLean runs into Jack Carter, a convicted timber thief, at Laurie-Lou's mother's general store, he alerts Freckles and his other workers to keep a careful watch on the trees. Carter, who gives Laurie-Lou wooden soldiers that he has carved, is actually hiding out in the Limberlost with fellow bank robbers Al Waters, Butch and Lefty. While McLean and his lumberjacks are cutting down a tree that had been marked by would-be timber thieves, Laurie-Lou ties Cubby to a log to prevent him from eating her candy. When Laurie-Lou realizes that the tree is going to fall near Cubby, she rushes to untie him but is pulled away by Freckles just as the giant trunk is descending on her. Cubby survives his injuries, and a relieved Laurie-Lou is able to participate in Mary's school variety show. Later Laurie-Lou, desperate to have Carter carve her a captain for her wooden doll collection, hides in his car one afternoon and rides with him to his cabin. Carter, whose photograph has just appeared in the newspapers, keeps the innocent Laurie-Lou at the hideout, unsure of what to do with her. Eventually Freckles shows up and spots Laurie-Lou in the cabin. Carter and his men capture Freckles, but Freckles executes a surprise escape and, after being shot, locks himself with Laurie-Lou in a back room. When Laurie-Lou discovers Al's machine gun in the room, she shows Freckles how to load and shoot it. Although suffering, Freckles confronts Carter and his men, who have hacked their way into the room with axes, and holds them at gunpoint until Mary and an F.B.I. agent arrive on the scene. After Laurie-Lou congratulates Freckles for his bravery, Mary tells him that she loves him, and the young couple kiss.

A California lumber baron hires a one-handed young man to guard 2,000 acres against timber thieves.

Freckles (Johnny Downs) comes home from college...and the sheriff accuses him of murder, gangsters put him on the spot, and his girl friend, Jane (Gale Storm), falls in love with a confidence man.

The story of a young crippled girl and her love for a teenage newsboy despite her over-protective and alcoholic mother's objections.

A wealthy woman's wild lifestyle finally drives her husband to take their two children, move out of the house and file for divorce. Positive she'll lose her children unless she shows the judge that she's changed her wild ways, she takes in two poor street kids, a brother and sister. The sister needs an operation or she'll never be able to walk again, and the woman thinks this is the perfect opportunity to show the judge how much she's "changed" so he won't take her children away.

Michael Worthington, an elderly owner of an apiary, befriends an embittered artist, Jamie McFarlaine, who is seeking a divorce from his wife. Jamie falls in love with Alice, but the romance is almost doomed by the gossip-spreading of a meddlesome neighbor. The pair are reconciled through the actions of an orphan girl, whom they decide to adopt after they are married.

A severely traumatized World War I veteran, believing that he's living on borrowed time, comes upon a peaceful little village and meets an old man called Bee Master and his protégé, Little Scout, who try to convince him that he has more to live for than he thinks he does.

A romance between two young lovers is complicated by their prohibitive parents.

Handsome Laddie Stanton courts neighbor Pamela Pryor, meeting opposition from her stern military father, recently immigrated from England.

In a small town in Indiana in the 1890s, the domineering and ambitious Mrs. Biddle arranges a marriage between her spoiled daughter Thelma and the town's prize catch, harvester David Langston, who is wedded to the soil. David is friends with orphan Ruth Jameson and, although she is in love with him, he eventually gives in to the machinations of Mrs. Biddle and consents to marry Thelma. Meanwhile, technological advances come to town, including its first gasoline buggy, galvanic battery, and metal bathtub fitted with running water. When Mrs. Biddle tries to convince David to give up the farming life and join her husband in real estate, Mr. Biddle, hen-pecked and dissatisfied with city life, warns David against selling his farm. Meanwhile, Mrs. Biddle has Ruth's sassy younger sister Naomi, whom David adores, placed in an orphanage. When Ruth's beloved grandmother Moreland, who was against David's marriage to Thelma, becomes sick and dies, Ruth and David are drawn together, and he discovers that Mrs. Biddle put Naomi in the orphanage. Attending an orphanage board meeting, David publicly confronts Mrs. Biddle, who is a member of the board, and announces his plans to adopt Naomi himself. Outraged, Thelma hurls her engagement ring at David. Mr. Biddle, amused, declares that from now on he will be master of his house. Ruth, David and Naomi are then reunited, and David vows to stay a harvester.

about a little boy and girl that meet in a beautiful garden and the little girl promises the boy that some day she would meet him there again. He goes off to study the violin in Italy and when he returns he finds the girl in the garden.