The Stranger's Return is surely King Vidor's most neglected film (though others have awarded that melancholy honor to next week's Ruby Gentry). It's hard to guess why this keen comic drama of jealousy and opportunity in the American heartland remains virtually unknown. In his last assignment for MGM before breaking away for Our Daily Bread, Vidor approached similar Jeffersonian themes of Western agriculture as the safety-valve for urban unemployed-but here within a post-State Fair cycle of light rural-life entertainment. (The commercial failure of the cycle in the farm belt led to Variety's famous headline, "STICKS NIX HICK PIX.") Independent, sharp-tongued Manhattanite Miriam Hopkins grabs Depression refuge at the prosperous Iowa farm of her irascible 85-year-old grandfather (played in patented geezer style by 55-year-old Lionel Barrymore). She's quietly hated by Grandpa's catty extended family-who cluck at "a relative that ain't livin' with her husband"-and attracts the married farmer next door (Franchot Tone, as incongruous in overalls as might be imagined). The satisfyingly complex plotting is closer to Restoration comedy than rural realism-Volpone in the rye. But if the social issues of Our Daily Bread are evaded, the performances are universally superior. The Stranger's Return answers the question, what would Our Daily Bread have looked like if made with the pool of talent-and the political constraints-of Louis B. Mayer's studio system? Scott Simmon