Frances Farmer plays two roles--a hard-boiled dance hall entertainer and her adult daughter--in this Edna Ferber adaptation that spans some twenty years in telling of the rise of the capitalist lumber industry that despoiled the forests of Wisconsin. Edward Arnold gives another of his bigger-than-life performances as a timber tycoon (he was teamed with Farmer in The Toast of New York, as well) and Walter Brennan won his first Academy Award for the role of Arnold's Swedish friend and rival for the affections of Miss Farmer. Directorial credits go to both Howard Hawks and William Wyler in this historically controversial film. John Belton writes, "According to Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich, Wyler shot only the last 800 feet, using Hawks' script. But researcher Karl Thiede claims that Wyler reshot 80 percent of the film. To complicate matters, the titles credit assistant director Richard Rossen with the documentary-like logging sequences, scenes I find characteristically Hawksian... Come and Get It (which Hawks claims is based on the story of his own grandfather) is distinctly Hawksian in its use of triangular imagery and love relationships and in the attempts of its central character to control his environment..." Film historian William K. Everson notes that "the early lumbering sequences are among the best things in the picture, generating both excitement and real sense of period. Nevertheless, the rest of the film is good strong drama in the best old Goldwyn-Arnold-Ferber tradition, has a spellbinding performance (her best) from Frances Farmer, a lovely Newman score, sumptuous mounting, glistening camerawork that is a sheer pleasure to watch."