Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) on Netflix
Passed19371h 31mComedyDramaRomance
Barkley and Lucy Cooper lose their house to foreclosure, and none of their grown children will take in both of them. The couple separates, each moving in with a different child.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb8.1/1010,786 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Featurette
Plot summary
Barkley cannot find work because of his age, and the bank forecloses on the home he shares with his wife Lucy. The couple gathers four of their grown children, the fifth living in California, to work out where they will stay. Only Nell has room for the two of them, and she wants three months to talk her husband around, so the parents split up for the time being. Lucy moves into the house of their son George, whose wife Anita teaches bridge there; Barkley stays with their daughter Cora. Both households treat the visiting parent as an inconvenience, and Barkley keeps hunting for a job that would let him and Lucy live independently again.
Cast
- Ray Mayeras Robert Cooper
- Ralph Remleyas Bill Payne
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Leo McCarey considered Make Way for Tomorrow his finest film; when he accepted his Academy Award for Best Director for The Awful Truth, released the same year, he told the audience, "Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture."
- The film earned good reviews in Japan, where screenwriter Kogo Noda saw it; years later it inspired the script of Tokyo Story (1953), written by Noda with director Yasujirō Ozu.
- Director Leo McCarey's father, Thomas McCarey, died in 1936, and the loss inspired the film, which serves as a tribute to McCarey's parents' generation.
- According to the Criterion Collection, the film runs to its unflinching ending, which director Leo McCarey refused to change despite pressure from the studio.
- Beulah Bondi, who played the elderly mother "Ma", was younger than the character she was playing and wore make-up to appear older.
