Make Way for Tomorrow
| Make Way for Tomorrow | |
|---|---|
Original poster
|
|
| Directed by | Leo McCarey |
| Produced by | Leo McCarey Adolph Zukor |
| Written by | Viña Delmar |
| Based on |
The Years Are So Long by Josephine Lawrence |
| Starring |
Victor Moore Beulah Bondi |
| Music by |
George Antheil Victor Young |
| Cinematography | William C. Mellor |
| Edited by | LeRoy Stone |
|
Production
company |
|
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
92 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Make Way for Tomorrow is a 1937 American drama film directed by Leo McCarey. The plot concerns an elderly couple (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) who are forced to separate when they lose their house and none of their five children will take both parents.
The film was written by Viña Delmar, from a play by Helen and Noah Leary, which was in turn based on the novel The Years Are So Long by advice columnist Josephine Lawrence.
McCarey believed that it was his finest film. When he accepted his Academy Award for Best Director for The Awful Truth which was released the same year, he said "Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture."
In 2010, it was selected for preservation by the United States Library of Congress's National Film Registry.
Barkley "Bark" (Victor Moore) and Lucy Cooper (Beulah Bondi) are an elderly couple who lose their home to foreclosure, as Barkley has been unable to find employment because of his age. They summon four of their five children—the fifth lives thousands of miles away in California—to break the news and decide where they will live until they can get back on their feet. Only one of the children, Nell (Minna Gombell), has enough space for both, but she asks for three months to talk her husband into the idea. In the meantime, the temporary solution is for the parents to split up and each live with a different child.
The two burdened families soon come to find the parents' presence bothersome. Nell's efforts to talk her husband into helping are half-hearted and achieve no success, and she reneges on her promise to eventually take them. While Barkley continues looking for work to allow him and his wife to live independently again, it is obvious that he has little or no prospect of success. When Lucy continues to speak optimistically of the day that he will find work, her teenage granddaughter bluntly advises her to "face facts" that it will never happen because of his age. Lucy's sad reply is to say that "facing facts" is easy for a carefree 17-year-old girl, but that at Lucy's age, the only fun left is "pretending that there ain't any facts to face ... so would you mind if I just kind of went on pretending?"
...
Wikipedia