Hard Traveling

Hard Traveling is a 1986 American drama film written and directed by Dan Bessie and starring J. E. Freeman, Ellen Geer and Barry Corbin. It is based on the 1941 novel Bread and a Stone by Alvah Bessie, the father of Dan Bessie.

Premise
Illiterate and unemployed, Ed Sloan marries widowed schoolteacher Norah Gilbert and becomes the stepfather of her two sons; but after not being able to find employment, Ed ends up murdering a businessman.

Cast

 * J. E. Freeman as Ed Sloan
 * Ellen Geer as Norah Gilbert Sloan
 * Barry Corbin as Frank Burton
 * James Gammon as Sergeant Slattery
 * Jim Haynie as Lieutenant Fisher
 * W. Scott DeVenney as Bill Gilbert

Reception
Walter Goodman of The New York Times gave the film a negative review and wrote, "A true story? Sure. It's true to an ideology-generated fiction that was always false to life and to art."

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times also gave it a negative review and wrote that the film "is all the more disappointing because it so clearly could have been so much better."