Make Way for Tomorrow

[The film has never been released in Finland, nor transmitted on tv, nor published on video or dvd]. US (c) 1937 Paramount. Presented by: Adolph Zukor. EX: William LeBaron. D: Leo McCarey. SC: Viña Delmar - based on the novel Years Are So Long (1934) by Josephine Lawrence and an unpublished play based on the novel by Helen Leary and Nolan Leary (1935). DP: William C. Mellor. AD: Hans Dreier, Bernard Herzbrun. Interior Decorations: A.E. Freudeman. M: Victor Young, George Antheil. Song: "Make Way For Tomorrow" (Leo Robin, Sam Coslow, Jean Schwartz). "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (Leo Friedman, Beth Slater Whitson). S: Walter Oberst, Don Johnson. ED: LeRoy Stone. CAST: Victor Moore (Barkley Cooper), Beulah Bondi (Lucy Cooper), Fay Bainter (Anita Cooper), Thomas Mitchell (George Cooper), Porter Hall (Harvey Chase), Barbara Read (Rhoda Cooper), Maurice Moscovitch (Max Rubens), Elisabeth Risdon (Cora Payne), Minna Gombell (Nellie Chase). 91 min. A Universal print. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 2 April 2009. - A fine print. - Revisited: Leo McCarey's masterpiece of the generation gap, or, rather "a canyon between us". - The motto is "Honour Thy Father and Mother", but the film is a satire about that theme. - Parents living with children: never has worked out for anybody else. - Grandmother Lucy spoils her daughter-in-law's bridge class. - The kind shopkeeper Rubens reads Lucy's letter to Barkley. - The first half of the film is the story of the embarrasment as the old Cooper couple gets evicted from their home and cannot fit to live with their children, even separately. - The second half is their "second honeymoon" 50 years after the first one (their golden wedding), for one day only, which they spend in New York, in Central Park, in front of the car store, in the restaurant and the dancing hall of the Vogard hotel, and in the railway station. - Everybody else is very nice to them. - "We have five children". "It must be a lot of pleasure". "I bet you haven't any children". - Barkley doesn't know that Lucy is going to an old people's home. "It's been very nice knowing you". - The train leaves. A medium shot of the lonely Lucy. The End.