Earthworm Tractors is a 1936 American comedy film directed by Ray Enright[1] and starring Joe E. Brown, June Travis and Guy Kibbee. The film is also known as A Natural Born Salesman in the United Kingdom.
The film is based on characters created by William Hazlett Upson in a series of stories that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post. The series featured Alexander Botts, an eternally optimistic self-proclaimed "natural-born salesman", and the Earthworm Tractor Company, and was inspired in part by Upson's actual work experience with the Caterpillar Tractor Company.
SYNOPSIS
Alexander Botts is a self-described natural born salesman and master mechanic, who is trying to make a big sale of Earthworm tractors to grouchy lumberman Johnson. Since Botts doesn't really know anything about tractors, and since the old-fashioned Johnson is opposed to tractors of any kind, it isn't going to be an easy sell. But Botts perseveres, encouraged by Johnson's daughter.
In this slapstick romantic comedy, the bumbling, but perpetually optimistic "natural-born salesman" Alexander Botts is egged on by his sweetheart Sally to do great things, so he writes a letter to the Earthworm Tractor Company, and is hired as a salesman despite the fact that he knows nothing about tractors. He gets fired more than once for all the destruction he causes, but is rehired by getting orders. After Sally abandons him as a failure and marries another man, he falls in love with Mabel, daughter of the cranky and partially deaf Sam, the owner of a lumberyard who believes he does not need tractors to clear paths for his lumbermen. Botts continues to enrage Sam via various antics such as moving Sam's house with Sam in it without telling him in advance and in the process destroying most of Sam's furniture. Eventually, he proves a super salesman by selling many tractors to Sam after he cures him of his deafness, and wins Mabel's love.
CAST & CREW
Joe E. Brown as Alexander Botts
June Travis as Mabel Johnson
Guy Kibbee as Sam Johnson
Dick Foran as Emmet McManus
Carol Hughes as Sally Blair
Gene Lockhart as George Healey
Olin Howland as Mr. Blair
Joseph Crehan as Mr. Henderson
Charles C. Wilson as H.J. Russell
William B. Davidson as Mr. Jackson
Irving Bacon as Taxicab Driver
Stuart Holmes as The Doctor
Directed by Ray Enright
Written by Hugh Cummings (writer), Richard Macaulay (writer), Paul Gerard Smith (writer), Joe Traub (writer), William Hazlett Upson (stories)
Produced by Samuel Bischoff, Hal B. Wallis (executive producer)
Cinematography Arthur L. Todd
Edited by Doug Gould
Music by Leo F. Forbstein
Production company Warner Bros.
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date July 24, 1936
Running time 69 minutes
Country United States
Language English
NOTES
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell copies of the film. Many of the versions of this film available are badly edited and of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation copies.
