You Can't Take It with You (1938)

You Can't Take It with You was directed by Frank Capra, perhaps the most famous director of the decade of the 1930s. It deals with some typical Capra themes: the class struggle in America during the Depression, gender politics, our connections to our fellow human beings, all very much a part of the FDR era in the United States. Yet, at its heart, it's a bit of a farce, a story of how confusion can lead to the most intriguing of outcomes. The title of the film is, as you probably already know, about the value of money. You can’t take it (money) with you when you pass away, but the relationships between you and other people is something that you’ll always treasure, maybe (?) even more than the money you have.

Anthony P. Kirby (the solid Edward Arnold) is trying to obtain a monopoly over the munitions industry in America. To do so, he needs to buy up all of the property in a 12-block area, but he faces one holdout: an elderly gentleman named Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), who lives in a home full of eccentrics. What Kirby doesn't know is that his son Tony (a young and smoothly handsome Jimmy Stewart) is in love with Vanderhof's granddaughter Alice (Jean Arthur), who works as Tony's secretary. Tony and Alice are unaware of the machinations of the elder Kirby, and even Grandpa Vanderhof doesn't make the connection to Kirby upon first sight because the businessman has been using a go-between for the negotiations. Tony meets Alice's family and still wants to marry her. Alice then tries to set up a dinner with Tony's parents where the Vanderhofs will allegedly all be on their best behavior. When the Kirbys arrive a day early for dinner, though, all hell breaks loose.

You may be wondering what is so eccentric about the Vanderhof family. Well, Grandpa quit work one day and hasn't earned a living in almost thirty years; he's also refused to pay his income taxes. His daughter, played by Spring Byington, has taken up playwriting because a typewriter was delivered by accident to their home; she keeps getting stuck, however, because she puts her characters into situations (like being in a monastery) about which she has no knowledge. Her husband makes illegal fireworks in the basement. Alice's sister Essie (Ann Miller in one of her earliest movie roles) has taken up dance lessons with an exiled Russian who likes to wrestle—that is, when she's not busy making candy named "Love Dreams" in the family's kitchen. Miller is almost always on her toes when she’s on the screen, and it’s an odd affection that turned out to be a precursor for her long career. Her screen husband (played by Dub Taylor, who has apparently always sounded that way) plays the vibraphone for her and likes to put cards in the candy with sayings like "The Revolution Is Coming." And those are just the family members. Anyone who wants to live in the house is welcome so long as they continue to have fun.

The dinner involving the two families, the Vanderhofs and the Kirbys, is meant to be an example of the divide in America at the time. The Vanderhofs seem to be at their weirdest on that particular day. They’re just being themselves really, but one of them is dancing around and another one has taken up painting with a model who’s wearing just a toga and a pet crow that keeps flying around the house. The Russian dance teacher decides to throw Mr. Kirby to the ground in a strange wrestling maneuver. All Mrs. Kirby (the stalwart Mary Forbes) seems to be able to do is look shocked or exasperated; she comes across as quite the snob regardless of the situation she’s in. The dinner party eventually breaks up—before a meal of frankfurters can actually be served—due to a police raid that results in everyone’s arrest. Why everyone has to be arrested is a subject for a much longer discussion elsewhere.

Frankly, I'm not sure that this family would be considered all that odd these days. More restrictive times might have called for them to be more isolated, yet they are friends with everyone in the neighborhood. In fact, when everyone in the house is arrested—oh, it's really just too complicated to explain it all here—the courtroom is filled with their friends, all of whom take up a collection to pay for the bail money as soon as the judge passes sentence. The judge (played by reliable character actor Henry Davenport) looks on with bemusement as the collecting of the money renders his courtroom too chaotic to control with his gavel. It's actually one of the funniest courtroom scenes I've watched since What's Up, Doc?

There are some serious issues at work here as well. The elder Kirby begins to develop a conscience after spending time in jail with some of the poorer classes of people. And Grandpa Vanderhof spouts some pretty Socialist-sounding ideas at times. Not that those ideas would have been uncommon in 1938 anyway, given the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal and all. This movie is quite obviously on the side of the downtrodden and tends to showcase their humanity and friendliness. Those who make money are all portrayed as greedy and unconcerned with the fate of other people. They're also friendless, perhaps the greatest indignity of all in the context of this film. All of it is pretty typical of a Capra movie from this time period.

I’ve mentioned performers like Mary Forbes and Henry Davenport, but You Can’t Take It with You is filled with lots of great character actors. Donald Meek, for example, plays an accountant who really wants to make toys, such as a mechanical rabbit that rises up out of a cabbage. He moves into the Vanderhof home and starts participating in such activities as making explosives. Eddie Anderson, who would later play the character of Rochester on the Jack Benny television series, plays one of the Vanderhof servants. Even the visitors to the home are played by actors with long careers. Charles Lane plays the IRS agent who tries to get back taxes from Grandpa, and Ward Bond, of all people, shows up as a police detective. Even Kolenkhov, the Russian dance teacher who really just wants dinner with the Vanderhofs when he visits, is played by Mischa Auer, who would have a long career in the movies and on television.

Jean Arthur is actually the top-billed actor for the film, and while she’s very good here, almost everyone else in the movie outshines her in terms of getting laughs. She’s almost the calm in the center of a storm of strangeness. Jimmy Stewart is very sweet and rather subtle as Tony Kirby, the wealthy son who is questioning his father’s principles. Stewart has a sly grin on his face most of the time, and his look of amusement is rather consistent, particularly in his encounters with the Vanderhof family. Even Lionel Barrymore, who is not my favorite actor from this time period even though he seems to be in almost every movie that was nominated for an Academy Award, is rather funny.

This movie is, overall, somewhat amusing, but I’m not certain that it breaks any new ground stylistically or thematically. The film’s origins as a stage play are somewhat obvious, given how much of the plot takes place in the central room of the Vanderhof family, but the filmmakers have opened the narrative a bit to allow for other locations. The film is sort of charming in its depiction of the kind of people who aren't often the subject of movies, but even they are given a pretty glossy shine. There's no "real" poverty on display here; all of the members of the family are perfectly content with their lives and none of them are struggling to find food to eat or shelter or any other of life's necessities. You Can't Take It with You has a message at its heart, but I doubt it's a message that was "radical" when the film was released. I'm pretty certain almost everyone would have been against corporate greed in the midst of the recovery from the Great Depression. Perhaps it was just the timing of its release that worked in its favor, what with its message that everyone wanted to see being reinforced, but I suspect it might have just been the hard-to-resist thought of living with such a band of people who live how they want to live, no questions asked. It’s not truly a slapstick comedy or a screwball comedy in the classic sense, I suppose, since it’s not quite as hilarious as the filmmakers think it is, but it’s an entertaining enough couple of hours.

Oscar Wins: Outstanding Production and Best Director (Frank Capra)

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Spring Byington), Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Recording, and Best Film Editing