You Can't Take It with You (1938) on Netflix
Passed19382h 6mComedyDramaRomance
Alice Sycamore, a stenographer, loves Tony Kirby, the son of the banker who owns their company. His parents disapprove of her eccentric family, whose house his father wants to buy.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.8/1030,743 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
Wall Street banker Anthony P. Kirby has won a government munitions monopoly and is buying up a twelve-block stretch around a rival factory to drive it out of business. One household refuses to sell, and Kirby's broker offers a large sum. His son Tony, a vice president at the company, wants to marry Alice Sycamore, a stenographer there. Alice is the only conventional member of the Sycamore household and fears Tony's parents will disdain her family, so she asks him to bring them to dinner before she accepts. Grandpa Martin Vanderhof heads that household, which also holds Alice's mother Penny, a playwright; her father Paul, who builds fireworks; her sister Essie Carmichael, a dancer who makes candies; and Essie's husband Ed, a printer and musician who delivers them. The Kirbys do not know whose house it is.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about You Can't Take It with You (1938)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Lionel Barrymore's character walks on crutches for the whole film; the story put it down to an accident sliding down a banister, but the real reason was Barrymore's worsening arthritis, which had already forced him out of A Christmas Carol that year.
- Frank Capra's Best Director win for You Can't Take It with You was his third in five years, after It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).
- Frank Capra cast James Stewart as Tony Kirby after seeing him in MGM's Navy Blue and Gold, choosing him to fit Capra's concept of idealized America.
- Kolenkov the ballet master's line "Confidentially, she stinks!", spoken about one of his students, was reused in a few Looney Tunes cartoons in the 1940s.
- Ann Miller, who plays Essie Carmichael, was only 15 years old when You Can't Take It with You was filmed.
