Editing The Good Earth (film) (section)

==Production==
The film's budget was $2.8 million, a small fortune at the time, and took three years to make.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}} A five-hundred-acre farm in [[Porter Ranch, Los Angeles, California|Porter Ranch, California]], was transformed into a replica of Chinese farmland for this film.<ref name="Roar140">{{citation
|last1=Háy
|first1=Pete
|author-link=Peter Háy
|title=MGM: When the Lion Roars
|year=1991
|publisher=Turner Publishing, Inc.
|location=Atlanta
|isbn=1-878685-04-X
|page=[https://archive.org/details/mgmwhenlionroars0000hayp/page/140 140]
|url=https://archive.org/details/mgmwhenlionroars0000hayp/page/140
}}</ref>

The movie script was more sympathetic to China than the novel had been. Wang Lung's son was now a representative of modern China who goes to university and leads the villagers. The family is a wholesome affectionate unit, even the uncle who in the novel exploits Wang Lung, and the sexual aspect of Lotus is played down. The [[Motion Picture Production Code|Hays office]], which supervised each Hollywood script, demanded more than twenty rewrites to eliminate what it found offensive.<ref>Hoban, James L., Jr., "Scripting The Good Earth: Versions of the Novel for the Screen," in Elizabeth Johnston Lipscomb, Frances E. Webb, Peter J. Conn, eds., ''The Several Worlds of Pearl S. Buck'' (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994).</ref> Before Herbert Stothart and Edward Ward were engaged to provide the music, negotiations took place with Austrian composer [[Arnold Schoenberg]],<ref name="Roar140" /> who is known to have made some musical sketches for the score before the plan fell through.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}}

Pearl Buck intended the film to be cast with all Chinese or Chinese-American actors. [[Irving Thalberg]] also envisioned casting only Chinese actors, but had to concede that American audiences were not ready for such a film. According to [[Variety (magazine)|Variety]], [[Anna May Wong]] had been suggested for the role of O-Lan, but the [[Hays Code]] anti-[[miscegenation]] rules required Paul Muni's character's wife to be played by a white actress.<ref>''Variety'', December 18, 1935, p. 3. See also Hodges, Graham Russell. ''Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend'' (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 44, 148, 60–67.</ref> Some confusion has resulted because the Production Code of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., 1930–1934 stated only that "miscegenation (sex relationship between the white and black races) is forbidden".<ref>The Production Code of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., 1930–1934, II, Item 6. No mention was made of miscegenation between whites and any race other than Black Americans.</ref> Chinese-American actress [[Soo Yong]], in fact, was cast as the Chinese aunt who was married to the uncle played by Caucasian actor [[Walter Connolly]].<ref>{{Citation |title=The Good Earth (1937) - IMDb |url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028944/fullcredits |access-date=2023-06-16}}</ref> MGM offered Wong the role of Lotus, but she refused, stating, "You're asking me – with Chinese blood – to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese  characters."<ref>{{cite web |last=Quan |first=Kenneth |date=January 9, 2004 |title=Profile of Anna May Wong: Remembering The Silent Star |url=http://asiapacificarts.usc.edu/article@apa?profile_of_anna_may_wong_remembering_the_silent_star_9144.aspx |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141013211521/https://asiapacificarts.usc.edu/article@apa?profile_of_anna_may_wong_remembering_the_silent_star_9144.aspx |archive-date=13 October 2014 |access-date=April 12, 2014 |work=Asia Pacific Arts |publisher=University of Southern California}}</ref>  Many of the characters were played by [[yellowface|white actors made to look Asian]] through yellowface, make-up techniques developed by [[Jack Dawn]] and used for the first time in this film.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}} Others in the supporting cast were Chinese American actors.

When MGM inquired into the possibility of making the film in China, the Chinese government was divided on how to respond. Initial hostility derived from resentment of the novel, which critics charged focused only on the perceived backwardness of the country, while some government officials hoped to have control which would be gone if the film work was done outside China. Generalissimo [[Chiang Kai-shek]] himself intervened, perhaps at the behest of his wife, [[Soong Mei-ling|Mme. Chiang]], whose American education made her an advocate for cooperation. Permission was granted on condition that the view of China be favorable, that the Chinese government would supervise and have control of shots done in China, and the unenforced stipulation that the entire cast be Chinese. The government in Nanjing did not foresee the sympathy the film would create and when MGM decided to shoot on location in China officials took extraordinary steps to control the production, forcing the studio to hire a Nationalist general to advise them on authentic settings and costumes (most of this footage was mysteriously lost when it was shipped home and had to be re-shot in California). There were reports that MGM distributed a different version of the film in China.<ref>Zhiwei Xiao,  "Nationalism, Orientalism, and an Unequal Treatise of Ethnography: The Making of ''The Good Earth'',"  in Suzie Lan Cassell, ed., ''From Gold Mountain to the New World: Chinese American Studies in the New Millennium'' (Alta Mira, 2002), pp. 277–79, 283–84.</ref>

The film's 1936 production lasted from February 28 to July 23. Thalberg died on September 14, four-and-a-half months before its [[Los Angeles]] premiere on January 29, 1937. The film credits stated that this was his "last great achievement".<ref>Hay, Peter. ''MGM: When the Lion Roars''</ref> Original prints of the film were presented in sepiatone.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Good Earth |url=https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/182/the-good-earth#overview |website=Turner Classic Movies |accessdate=October 30, 2021}}</ref>