You Can't Take It With You

Frank Capra won his third Best Director Oscar® and second Best Picture Oscar® in five years for this sparkling adaptation of the George Kaufman-Moss Hart smash Broadway comedy. Having patched up a falling out with studio boss Harry Cohn, Capra convinced the mogul to pay a then-record $200,000 for the screen rights, then assembled an astonishing cast that included Jimmy Stewart, Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, a very young Ann Miller, Spring Byington, Samuel S. Hinds, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Donald Meek, H.B. Warner, and, making his film debut, an amiable young hick who called himself Dub Taylor. Robert Riskin wrote the screenplay, and while purists may quibble with the considerable changes he made, the essential story of the Vanderhofs, a slightly pixilated New York family who live life to the fullest without necessarily regarding what Society deems proper, still shines through. Stewart plays the straight arrow who's trying to woo eldest daughter Jean Arthur as best he can. The film received five other Oscar® nominations, and was "remade" for TV in 1979, followed five years later by a short-lived TV series. Amusingly, stock footage of Auer's fireworks going off in the basement turned up decades later in THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES!