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Shiftless Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) and his family of hillbilly stereotypes live in a rural backwater where their ancestors were once wealthy planters. Their slapstick existence is threatened by a banks plans to take over the land for more profitable farming; subplots involve the affairs and marriages of son Dude (William Tracy) and daughter Ellie May (Gene Tierney).
The Lester family has farmed the land along Tobacco Road in Georgia for over a century. Once prosperous, it has now become run down in large part as current family patriarch, Jeeter Lester, does little to help himself or his family, he only feigning "work", instead preferring to "beg, borrow or steal" to put food on the table. The one saving grace is that the now deceased landowner, Captain John Harmon, has allowed them to stay on the land in perpetuity, so that they will always have a home. So when they hear that Captain Tim, Captain Johns son, has returned to Tobacco Road, they are expecting, like Captain John before him, he is extending them credit to allow them at least enough to buy cotton seed. However, Captain Tim has instead come to tell them that he is in as dire financial straits as them, and that the bank has taken over the land earmarking it for scientific agriculture. Captain Tim does however convince banker George Payne to allow the Lesters to stay if they can pay an annual rent of $100 by next Sunday. With no money at all, Jeeter has to figure out how to come up with that $100 so that he and matriarch Ada will not have to go to the poor farm. One possibility is that one of their dozen or so surviving young adult children will come out of the woodwork to save them, most, with the exception of Pearl, who is in a complicated marriage with simple minded local Lov Bensey, and Dude and Ellie May, who still live at home, long ago getting as far away from Tobacco Road as possible with their current whereabouts unknown to either Jeeter or Ada. Another possibility is that the bank in Augusta will loan him the money. But the strongest possibility is that he can finagle the money out of recently widowed Sister Bessie - who seems to believe she can sing her way loudly into heaven - she too only having just returned to Tobacco Road with life insurance money in hand.
Charley Grapewin
Jeeter
Gene Tierney
Ellie May
Marjorie Rambeau
Sister Bessie
William Tracy
Dude Lester
Elizabeth Patterson
Ada Lester
Dana Andrews
Captain Tim
Slim Summerville
Peabody
Ward Bond
Lov
Grant Mitchell
George Payne
Zeffie Tilbury
Grandma
Russell Simpson
Chief of Police
Spencer Charters
County Clerk
Irving Bacon
Teller
Harry Tyler
Auto Dealer
Charles Halton
Mayor
George Chandler
Clerk
Dorothy Adams
Payne's Secretary
Erville Alderson
Driver of Car Almost Hit by Dude Lester
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