Spring Byington

[7] James Stewart plays the son of a Wall Street tycoon whose father (Edward Arnold) is trying to force an eccentric family out of their home so he can pursue a major real estate development deal. Things get more complicated when Stewart realizes the family in question is his fiancée’s (Jean Arthur). You Can’t Take It With You is a quintessential Frank Capra movie, focusing …

[4] Errol Flynn stars as a surgeon who takes the fall for an older colleague who accidentally loses a patient under the knife. As fate would have it, he then falls in love with the deceased patient’s daughter (Anita Louise), but when she learns he’s the one blamed for her mother’s death, he flees in self-imposed exile. Searching for new meaning to his life, he …

[6] George Cukor directs Katharine Hepburn as Jo March in one of the earliest screen adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a chronicle of the lives and loves of four sisters growing up in New England during the Civil War. There’s intrinsic nostalgia and sentimentality to the storytelling, but Cukor never lets the film become maudlin. That’s largely owed to Hepburn’s contribution. The then-controversial …

[6] Fay Bainter (The Children’s Hour) stars in this ‘war at home’ drama about a wealthy widow who ignores the effects of WWII even as her son (Mrs. Miniver‘s Richard Ney) is drafted into service. Her stubborn refusal to deal with reality causes a rift between her suitor (Edward Arnold), her daughter (Jean Rogers), and her dim-witted socialite friend (Spring Byington). As you might expect, …

[7] Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland reteam after their initial pairing in Captain Blood. This time, they’re in a love triangle that plays out during an Indian massacre of British women and children, later spurring into action the contents of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s vengeful Charge. For a film from the ’30s, Charge has balls. You see women and children die on screen during some …