Three sons, one daughter. One widowed mother who loves them all unconditionally, has tried to keep the peace, but gets frustrated over the animosity between the boys. For good reason, at least one of them is despised by his older brother, and the youngest son is on the verge of blowing things up like the younger brother in "Ragtime". He's a social justice warrior without the knowledge of any justifiable reason to be fighting for what he's fighting for, but he's hanging out nightly at Union Square with a bunch of other rebels without a cause, and ultimately that will get him into huge legal trouble. As for the daughter, she's M.I.A., off at college, supposedly engaged to a promising attorney, but when she shows up out of the blue, it's obvious that she's moved on with different plans, having married another younger attorney, and thus as messed up as at least two of her siblings.
The mother is May Robson, who became a lady for a day thanks to Frank Capra's 1933 classic that got her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Like Marie Dressler and a few select others, she was one of a handful of senior citizens who played leads while most of them played character parts, and as usual, Robson is very commanding. She's annoyed by oldest son Preston Foster's insistence that the two other brothers are losers (even though he's right), and middle son William Bakewell is an untrained actor who thinks he's John Barrymore. Bakewell even tries to mimic Barrymore as Richard III and does a fine job, even if the character he's playing makes you want to throttle him. Foster is stressed trying to keep his growing men's clothing shop financially sound, with fiancee Suzanne Kaaren working pretty much day and night to help him. Youngest brother James Rush is so self involved in his non-activism that he doesn't realize that he's being manipulated by some high powered trouble makers to do their dirty work for them, and ends up being arrested.
In the middle of all of this, Bakewell demands (and gets) $1000 from mom so he can go to Hollywood to try to break into the movies (having been fired from a movie he was doing in the Bronx), and sister Florine McKinney shows up to tell them that she's married another man (Phillip Trent) and thus dumping her hardworking New York based defense attorney (Leon Ames). Robson realizes that Foster needs the money to keep his shop afloat more than Bakewell needs a Hollywood break and asks for it back, but when Bakewell refuses, a family row ensues causing Robson to explode to the point where you expect her to clutch her chest. It's a powerful moment that's been building since the beginning, and Robson has you riveted. The trial sequence of Rush itself is rather unbelievable, with Bakewell breaking into "The Quality of Mercy" speech from "The Merchant of Venice" (big ham that he is), and Robson nearly gets arrested for contempt of court all because of her two son's ridiculous behaviors.
There are some still timely elements to this family drama that certainly will never be compared to MGM's "Andy Hardy" series that came along a few years later, or the brief Warner Brothers series of Fanny Hurst's "Four Daughters" where Robson played the spinster aunt. This is real crisis that many families can identify with in why siblings don't get along, and when Robson demands that Bakewell stick around until Rush's trial, you get the feeling that she doesn't care if she ever sees him again afterwards. Samuel S. Hinds gives a tender performance as a local longtime friend of the family's who is slyly courting Robson, with Foster's blessing. I've met many people like Rush over the years who feel they must get involved in some social cause yet don't understand their mission or what they are really fighting for. It's a believable element that might not be dealt with realistically in court, but hopefully makes the naive son a bit more aware of how to instill positive change. Robson is the true star here, making every moment she is on screen absolutely hers, and at the end, there's even a little slap in the face for the egotistical Bakewell whose character will probably be stuck in Hollywood epics in the background carrying spears.
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