Ruthless lumberjack foreman Barney Glasgow (Edward Arnold) will stop at nothing to achieve his goal, to someday become the head of the logging industry in 19th century Wisconsin.

His determination to succeed leads him to end his relationship with saloon singer Lotta Morgan (Frances Farmer) and marry Emma Louise Hewitt (Mary Nash), the daughter of his boss Jed Hewett (Charles Halton), in order to secure a partnership in his business.

Over two decades later, a wealthy and successful Barney and Emma Louise's son Richard (Joel McCrea) strongly objects to his father's practice of destroying forests without planting new trees.

Samuel Goldwyn paid $150,000 for the screen rights to the Edna Ferber novel, who sold it to him confident he understood she had intended it to be "primarily a story of the rape of America .

Goldwyn was attracted to the melodramatic Barbary Coast-like aspects of the story, which prompted him to hire that film's director, Howard Hawks, to bring Come and Get It to the screen.

Ferber had approved Jane Murfin's script, which Hawks found wanting, and he persuaded her and Goldwyn to allow him to bring in Jules Furthman to work on a rewrite.

He looked at numerous screen tests of aspiring starlets and finally settled on Andrea Leeds, who previously had played minor or uncredited roles in a handful of films.

[2] Soon after filming began, Goldwyn underwent two major surgeries that incapacitated him for a lengthy period of time, keeping him away from the studio and the daily rushes.

[3] Upon returning to the studio, Goldwyn viewed a rough cut of the film and was shocked to discover Hawks had shifted the focus from the unbridled destruction of the land to a love triangle in which brawling Barney Glasgow and Swan Bostrom vied for the affections of lusty Lotta Morgan.

"[9] British Channel 4 observed, "It's a minor Hawks, to be sure, and the action does tend to lag at times, but the fine performances from Farmer, Brennan and McCrea are what make it.