SYNOPSIS: Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow is one of the great unsung Hollywood masterpieces, an enormously moving Depression-era depiction of the frustrations of family, aging, and the generation gap. Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi headline a cast of incomparable character actors, starring as an elderly couple who must move in with their grown children after the bank takes their home, yet end up separated and subject to their offspring’s selfish whims. An inspiration for Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Make Way for Tomorrow is among American cinema’s purest tearjerkers, all the way to its unflinching ending, which McCarey refused to change despite studio pressure.
| Barkley Cooper | Victor Moore |
| Lucy Cooper | Beulah Bondi |
| Anita Cooper | Fay Bainter |
| George Cooper | Thomas Mitchell |
| Harvey Chase | Porter Hall |
| Rhoda Cooper | Barbara Read |
| Max Rubens | Maurice Moscovitch |
| Cora Payne | Elisabeth Risdon |
| Nellie Chase | Minna Gombell |
| Robert Cooper | Ray Mayer |
| Bill Payne | Ralph Remley |
| Mamie | Louise Beavers |
| Director | Leo McCarey |
| Producer | Leo McCarey and Adolph Zukor |
| Screenplay | Viña Delmar |
| Based on a novel by | Josephine Lawrence |
| And a play by | Helen and Nolan Leary |
| Cinematography | William C. Mellor |
| Special photographic effects | Gordon Jennings |
| Art direction | Hans Dreier and Bernard Herzbrun |
| Editing | LeRoy Stone |
| Sound | Walter Oberst and Don Johnson |
| Interior decorations | A. E. Freudeman |
| Music | Victor Young and George Antheil |
| Musical direction | Boris Morros |
By February 23, 2010
Like many other French cinephiles, I discovered Make Way for Tomorrow relatively late, although we had been interested in Leo McCarey for years. We had hunted down his Read more »
February 17, 2010
Hollywood craftsman Leo McCarey’s long unsung masterwork Make Way for Tomorrow will soon be garnering deserved attention—we’re releasing the Criterion special edition on DVD February 23. The Read more »
August 31, 2010
In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Dennis Lim provides some context for the work of Maurice Pialat, whose first film, L’enfance nue, is out on Criterion DVD: “Recognized in France as one of Read more »
March 02, 2010
Let’s start out with Dave Kehr in the New York Times: “There are few American films as subtle, moving, and bursting with human truth as Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, and few that Read more »
December 22, 2011
Last year, we told you about Daniel Eagan’s rigorous, informative, and very entertaining book America’s Film Legacy, a guide to the titles chosen for the National Film Registry, which was instituted following 1988’s National Film Preservation Act.
