O My America: “Make Way for Tomorrow”

by Lawrence Bush

“When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.” —Jewish proverb

Every once in a while you order up a flick from Netflix and then forget why you ordered it, and then you watch it and sit there at the end, stunned and sniffling and astounded that such a film was ever made. That’s what happened to me tonight after viewing a 1937 movie, Make Way for Tomorrow, which is the best argument for Social Security that Hollywood ever produced.

The film tells of a happy, kind, elderly, joined-at-the-hip couple who lose their house to unemployment and foreclosure and are forced to live separately with their adult kids, who are all too busy being self-interested to make any major sacrifices or take any major risks on their parents’ behalf. The lead actors are Victor Moore (who reminded me in voice and gesture of Frank Morgan, the actor who played the Wizard of Oz) and Beulah Bondi (who was Jimmy Stewart’s mother in both Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life). A highly sympathetic Jewish shopkeeper with a Yiddish accent is played by Maurice Moscovitch. These and other characters are all very familiar, yet the actors’ performances are subtle and riveting. The plot threatens sentimentality but never goes there. The script is filled rueful sympathy for all of the characters. And the ending . . . the ending makes your jaw drop.

Make Way for Tomorrow was written by a daughter of the Yiddish theater, Vina Delmar, based on a play by Helen and Noah Leary, which in turn was based on a novel by advice columnist Josephine Lawrence. The director was Leo McCarey, who also directed the Marx Brothers’ anti-war classic, Duck Soup, and virtually invented the “screwball comedy” (and Cary Grant’s image) with The Awful Truth, which was also released in 1937. When it received an Academy Award for Best Director, McCarey said in his acceptance speech, “Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture.”

Before the Social Security Act of 1935, poverty among the elderly was America’s great shame. Today it’s poverty among children; thanks mostly to Social Security, the elderly are no more poor than younger working Americans. Make Way for Tomorrow says nothing directly about any of this, yet it combines a conservative, “family values” sensibility with a sense of outrage in a way that could drive a Tea Partyer to repentance.

There’s a decent review of the film at http://www.ruthlessreviews.com/10275/make-way-for-tomorrow/