Was Solomon Gann Jewish? Does that tie in to why he’s labeled Communist? No one ever says so, but would they, in a Disney movie? The movie already has a lot to explain to kids watching, and frankly, it’s not a kids’ movie anyway. Sol, after all, is a name with a pretty specific ethnic tag. This isn’t something that occurred to me as a child, but as an adult, I began to wonder about the Ganns. So the question for the audience becomes whether Natty will reach his father before his suicide attempts are successful. With his wife and daughter both gone, he has nothing left to live for and accepts the most dangerous jobs a lumber camp has to offer-and those are some pretty dangerous jobs. Her wallet is found under the wreckage, and though there is no body, Sol believes his daughter to be dead. Unfortunately, while she is hitching the rails to come to him, a train she was on is derailed in Colorado. He really was going to send her a ticket. She never loses faith that he will be, but unlike many others, she is right. Where Natty is lucky is that her father is actually waiting for her. Twinky (Hannah Cutrona) is another inmate in the children’s home to which Natty is briefly sent. Parker (Barry Miller) leads a band of children like Natty in thieving raids to scrounge food. There is Harry (John Cusack), who lost his father in a crush when they were both trying to be considered for two jobs available that hundreds were trying for his father was trampled. On the road, Natty most famously meets Wolf (Jed), whom she rescues from a dogfighting ring, but that’s not all. Many come from families that cannot afford to feed all their children. The movie makes it clear that a lot of kids are crossing the US in one way or another. So Natty runs away, determined to get across the US and reunite with her father. Connie doesn’t much like Natty, and she decides to report the girl as an abandoned child. He pays his landlady, Connie (Lainie Kazan), to watch Natty until he can afford to send for her. ![]() However, he is lucky and manages to get a government job in the timber country of the Pacific Northwest. ![]() He’s a union organizer who gets tarred with the label Communist. Her father, Sol (Ray Wise), is out of work, because it’s 1935, and a lot of people were out of work. Meredith Salenger was fifteen at the time she played the role of headstrong, independent Natty. But one I brought up that hadn’t been mentioned was The Journey of Natty Gann, a movie that seems to have mostly disappeared from people’s recollections but one which seems to have played a lot on the Disney Channel of my memory. It’s not something that gets talked about a lot, I think in part because people resent how many princesses there are in the canon. We were talking the other day about girls’ movies.
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