Novelist Erskine Caldwell wrote a sensational book of Americana about a group of poor white sharecroppers in Georgia who are turned off their land by wealthy businessmen. The novel, one of the richest and most finely detailed depictions of class struggle in the United States, became a successful play by Jack Kirkland. Nunnally Johnson adapted it for the screen, and the legendary John Ford was a natural to direct. His Westerns were always character studies played out against an authentic rural landscape, and Tobacco Road had the same ingredients. The sterling cast contained many lesser-known actors in starring roles, including Charley Grapewin and Elizabeth Patterson. Essentially an ensemble slice-of-life movie, it can best be compared to Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, made a year earlier.