Cass Timberlane


Cass Timberlane is a romantic drama film starring Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner and Zachary Scott, directed by George Sidney, and released in November 1947. It was based on the 1945 novel Cass Timberlane: A Novel of Husbands and Wives by Sinclair Lewis, which was Lewis' nineteenth novel and one of his last.

Plot

Former Congressman and now Judge Cass Timberlane is a middle-aged, incorruptible, highly respected man who enjoys good books and playing the flute. He falls for Ginny, a much younger girl from a lower class in his small Minnesota town. At first, the marriage is happy, but Ginny becomes bored with the small town and with the judge's friends. She leaves him for an affair with a lawyer, Timberlane's boyhood friend. Eventually, disillusioned with her lover, Ginny returns to her husband and becomes the good wife. The novel is Lewis's examination of marriage, love, romance, heartache and trust.

Cast

Cultural references

spoofed the novel in The New Yorker as "Shad Ampersand."
The song "Cleo the Cat" by the band Benton Harbor Lunchbox was inspired by the novel Cass Timberlane: A Novel of Husbands and Wives.

Reception

Though it received tepid critical reviews, the film was a box office hit, earning $3,983,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $1,203,000 elsewhere, but because of its high production cost, it only returned a profit of $746,000.

Home media

Cass Timberlane was released to DVD by Warner Home Video on July 6, 2010 via Warner Archives as a DVD-on-demand disc available through Amazon.

In other media

Radio

Cass Timberlane was presented on Theatre Guild on the Air February 15, 1953. The one-hour adaptation starred Fredric March and Nina Foch.