Make Way for Tomorrow

No big box office names grace Make Way For Tomorrow, but Leo McCarey put together a great ensemble cast in this story about old age and the consequences thereof in 1937 America. Though Social Security had just passed, no one would see any money from it until 1942 and health insurance was strictly for those who could afford it.

But Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore who are in relatively good health all things considered are not entering the twilight years of a happy life together without some big problems. The family homestead as did many family homesteads during the Depression has been taken by the bank, forcing Victor and Beulah to look to their children for help.

In those days that's exactly what used to happen. But none of their five children can take on both of them, they have no room. So Beulah goes to live with son Thomas Mitchell and his wife and daughter Fay Bainter and Barbara Read. Moore goes to live with daughter Elizabeth Risdon and husband Ralph Remley. In both households the parents are made to feel in the way and in some respects they were.

It was the cruelest kind of punishment to separate two people who spent half a century together. But that's what happens to both. Before the end of the film, the two spend a day in New York reminiscing of lost youth and the good times therein.

Moore and Bondi were around the same age as their 'children' and were made to look much older. Bondi made a specialty of playing much older than she was and in fact did live into her nineties. As for Moore though he was doing character roles now, he was a big comedy star on the Broadway stage going back to the ragtime era. His biggest role on Broadway was co-starring with Fay Templeton in George M. Cohan's 45 Minutes From Broadway.

Especially in the last half hour Moore and Bondi will pull all the emotional restraints from your soul. They really do become an idealized version of parents and grandparents. Make Way For Tomorrow is heartstring touching movie and hasn't dated one bit.