plot based on...

You could check Hollywood Video if they have one where you live, mine had it and i live in Washington.

I'm not sure if the plot was based in reality or not, but I remember my family had a copy of the book when I was growing up, the movie edition, no less, hardbound. If I can track down which sibling has it ( providing it wasn't thrown out), maybe I'll find out more.

Here's information from the Wisconsin Small Communities website:
http://www.pchswi.org/archives/communities/smallcomms.html

From the Stevens Point Journal May 19, 1992
Benson Corners made a name for itself

One community in Portage County continues to live on in literature and on screen, although its existence is more in history than present times.

Benson Corners, about three miles east of Nelsonville on Highway 161, inspired the 1930's novel “Our Vines Have Tender Grapes” by George Victor Martin. Episodes from Martin’s novel then served as the basis for the 1945 movie with the same title, which turned into a box office hit and received the Parents Magazine medal as the most wholesome family film of 1945.

Yet the community was formally known as New Hope, the designation for the post office located there from 1864 to 1904. Those were the days when residents of an area went to a central location to pick up their mail before R.F.D. (rural free delivery) began providing delivery to residences.

While New Hope was the community’s formal name for postal services, it was more popularly known as Benson Corners, apparently in reference to Peer Benson, who operated a store there in the 1870's.

Martin, who lived in Chicago, based his book on the childhood reminiscences of his wife, the former Selma Jacobson, who was reared a mile away. While he changed the name of the Wisconsin community to Benson Junction, be retained the names of his wife and her father, Martinus Jacobson, a Norwegian who farmed about 12 acres with mules and milked four cows.

When MGM Studios filmed the story, Dalton Trumbo was enlisted to write the screenplay, Edward G. Robinson was selected to play Martinus and child star Margaret O’Brien was picked to play Selma.

The movie met critical and popular acclaim. The New York Times praised Robinson as giving “one of the finest performances of his long and varied screen career” and O’Brien and fellow child star Butch Jenkins for their “remarkably natural” acting.

While the movie was praised for its wholesomeness when released, the House Committee on Un-American Activities cited the film for elements smacking of Leftism.

The film would be the last one for Trumbo before he was blackballed as one of the “Hollywood Ten.”

Today the community at the intersection with Highway T is a collection of six residences, a Lutheran church, some outbuildings and some abandoned buildings.