A Cruz dos Anos

MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (Paramount, 1937), directed by Leo McCarey, ranks one of the very best and well scripted dramas from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and one worthy of recognition and/or rediscovery. No longer available on any local TV channel as it was in the 1970s, MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW had frequent revivals on American Movie Classics, from June 20, 1994 until its final air date, April 3, 1999, and a Turner Classic Movies premiere September 6, 2010. Thus far, it's never been distributed on video cassette but DVD distribution did finally come many years later.

Yes, MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW is sad, moving, but so very true to life dealing realistically about coping with old age. Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi (in possibly the best film role in her entire career) play an elderly couple who lose their home and find that their adult children are finding excuses NOT to take them in. A situation that even rings true even by today's society. Leo McCarey won an Academy Award as Best Director that year for the comedy THE AWFUL TRUTH (Columbia), starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant. McCarey was reported to have said that he had won for the wrong movie, that it should should have won for this one. I agree. As much as THE AWFUL TRUTH is a fine movie in its own right, MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW is a far better production, dramatically anyway.

In support here are Fay Bainter (in a rare unsympathetic role); Thomas Mitchell (the only one of the children to know how selfish he has been while the others refuse to realize it themselves), Porter Hall, Barbara Read (as the adolescent granddaughter) and Elisabeth Risdon. While MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW lacks star names, it consists of character actors in leading parts, which is just as good. Victor Moore, usually in comedic supporting parts or leads in program productions (better known as "B" movies), is fine in a rare dramatic role, but is overshadowed by Beulah Bondi, whose performance is excellent as well as tear inducing. Although she plays a woman possibly in her late 70s, she was actually 45 when the film was made. Sadly, MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW did not receive a single Academy Award nomination. If a nomination was to be offered, it definitely would go to Bondi as Best Actress for such highlights as sitting sadly in her rocking chair as the radio plays the sentimental score of "I Adore You" as introduced in Paramount's own COLLEGE HOLIDAY (1936), along with her closing scene at the train station bidding husband Moore farewell to the underscoring of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," scenes that remain in memory long after the movie is over.

The plot might sound trite in print, but to see it is to appreciate the kind of movie that can never be remade in the same manner as the original nor come anywhere close to great motion picture making such as this one. (***1/2)

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.

I cannot believe that this movie did not receive any Academy Awards! I give it "All T's", for touching, tender, terrific, and tearfully timeless!!! Why it continues to be overlooked and not made into a video behooves any Beulah Bondi fan and people like me that have had the privilege of catching it tucked away between 2am infomercials on other stations. Get it on the shelf in the video stores! I've been looking for it for years! Can you say, "Bitter batter baby buggy bumpers" to your spouse as lovingly as these two lovebirds did in that 1937 classic? Romeo, Juliet, Scarlett and Rhett can't hold a light to 'Pa' and 'Ma' Cooper!

One of the greatest tear-jerkers of all time. The sad tale of how two parents lose their house and not one of their children will let their own parents live with them. I agree, Miss Bondi deserved to win the Oscar that year but what else can I say about that subject. If you ever get to see this film, bring along a box of tissues. Make that two.

An elderly couple lose their home and their grown children don't want them around, so where can they turn? After a creaky start, this thoughtful film becomes absorbing and very touching. It thankfully never resorts to feel-good measures: the oldsters are not painted as saints (in fact, Beulah Bondi's "Ma" is realistically nagging and nosy) and their kids are completely selfish (which is entirely believable). The picture has one of the most haunting endings that I can recall, and it's even more powerful to consider how timely it all is (and how this situation still rears its ugly head today). An emotionally gripping, wistful, memorable movie. ***1/2 from ****