11th Academy Awards · 1939
You Can't Take It with You
Directed by Frank Capra
“You'll love them all for giving you the swellest time you've ever had!”
The story
Alice, the only relatively normal member of the eccentric Sycamore family, falls in love with Tony Kirby, but his wealthy banker father and snobbish mother strongly disapprove of the match. When the Kirbys are invited to dinner to become better acquainted with their future in-laws, things don't turn out the way Alice had hoped.
What critics & audiences say
Tomatometer94%Fresh#30 of 98 winnersFamous lines
I feel so good, life is running around inside of me like a squirrel!
…Communism, Fascism, Voodooism, everybody's got an -ism these days.
IRS Agent: Mr. Vanderhof, our records show that you've never paid an income tax.
Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: That's right!
IRS Agent: Why not?
Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: I don't believe in it.
IRS Agent: There are 48 states. See. And if it weren't for interstate commerce nothing could go from one state to another. See?
Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: Well, why not, have they got fences?
You may be a high mogul to yourself, Mr. Kirby, but to me you're a failure - failure as a man, failure as a human being, even a failure as a father.
…People spend their whole lives building castles in the air and then nothing ever comes of it. I wonder why that is? Well, it takes courage. Everybody's afraid to live.
Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: How do you know when my birthday is? Even I don't know.
Alice Sycamore: Anytime I get an impulse to get you something, that's your birthday.
The same One that takes care of the lilies of the field, Mr. Poppins, except that we toil a little, spin a little, have a barrel of fun.
You're so beautiful. Like, sometimes you're so beautiful it just gags me.
…I collected stamps. Went to the zoo when I got the notion. Took up the harmonica. And even found time to notice when Spring came around.
Quotes via Wikiquote
Fun facts
- Lionel Barrymore spends the whole film on crutches, explained as an accident sliding down a banister. In reality his worsening arthritis was the cause, and it had already forced him to withdraw from A Christmas Carol earlier that year.Wikipedia · Production
- The ballet master Kolenkov's line about one of his students, 'Confidentially, she stinks!', was borrowed for several Looney Tunes cartoons in the 1940s.Wikipedia · In popular culture
- Ann Miller, who plays the dancing Essie Carmichael, was only 15 when the film was shot.Wikipedia · Production
- The win gave Frank Capra his third Best Director Oscar in just five years, after It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).Wikipedia · Introduction
- Columbia's Harry Cohn paid $200,000 in 1937 for the film rights to George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.Wikipedia · Production
- Frank Capra cast James Stewart as Tony Kirby after seeing his 'sensitive, heart-grabbing role' in MGM's Navy Blue and Gold, feeling Stewart fit his concept of 'idealized America'.Wikipedia · Production
- Critic Leslie Halliwell complained that the 'hilarious, warm and witty play' had largely been turned into 'a tirade against big business'.Wikipedia · Reception
- The New Yorker's John Mosher thought the stage version was better, writing that the screen additions made the film 'at times a ponderous thing, the more so the further from the play the screen version strays'.Wikipedia · Reception
- In 2010 James Berardinelli called the film a pleasant two hours and 'a reminder of how era-specific the criteria for winning an Oscar are'.Wikipedia · Reception
- The story was adapted as a one-hour Lux Radio Theatre play in October 1939, featuring Edward Arnold, Robert Cummings and Fay Wray.Wikipedia · Adaptations