Ford didn't know what to do with Mister Roberts that wasn't repeating what was successful in New York. He was trying to do things to the play that would be his in the film.
“I took Laura on a trip once where we followed the Immigrant Trail for about six hundred miles. She really learned a lesson. People forget too often how it was back then.”
“I think it better to do right, even if we suffer in so doing, than to incur the reproach of our consciences and posterity.”