The Class Struggle Will Always Be With Us-The Golden Age Of Comedy Struggle Not-Frank Capra’s Adaptation of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You” (1938) A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

You Can’t Take It With You, starring zany Jean Arthur, wild and wooly James Stewart, Philosopher-King Lionel Barrymore, Wall Street Tycoon typhoon Edward Arnold, directed by Frank Capra and based on the Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, 1938

The class struggle is a mighty beast. The class struggle for those few not in the know is where the rich keep piling on their riches and use every means from simple persuasion and betrayal to the big guns if the plebian masses get uppity and the poor, the rest of us in some degree try to grab a couple of extra scraps for our labors. Ever since a guy, a German guy named Karl Marx and his buddy Freddy something, a German name too invented the class struggle it has had a checkered career. Sometimes as calm as the ocean waters coming tepidly to shore and others like in revolutionary upheaval times with a big roar-and enter big guns to settle the damn thing.

Today you hear plenty from many quarters about income disparity (read: class struggle defeats for working people), about the gap between the richer getting richer by their practical ownership of the government, its courts, cops and the guys with the big guns and the rest of us trying to find money on the ground for rent and such  (read: class struggle defeats for working people). But today is not the only time when the rich wanted, well, wanted more, and took what they wanted. And today is not the only time when the poor, the rest of us are treated to a comedic sent-up of that class struggle nobody wants to call by its right name. Hence this review of the late 1930s film You Can’t Take It With You which shows another way, a way without guns although that seems strange since that age brought us many bloody labor strikes, to conduct the class struggle. Humor and plain common sense.    

Here’s the scoop. Moneybags (draw a picture in your mind of a Wall Street sage and that would be about right), a Wall Street financier played by Edward Arnold who made a career of frowning on everything wanted to control what would later be called the military-industrial complex (MIC) before World War II. He planned to build some humongous weapons factory to produce this material. Problem: he needed to control a certain section of New York City to place his boot on. Problem: people lived and went about their daily lives there including one old curmudgeon who we will call Gramps, played by Lionel Barrymore last seen as a hotelier challenging old-time mobster has-been Johnny Rocco who was trying for a big comeback down in the Keys, who refused to sell for his own reasons. The struggle continues between Gramps who has learned that money, dough, kale and power isn’t everything and Moneybags who only cares like Johnny Rocco for, well, more.  

That battle though would not rate this film as a great comedy of the golden age of such fare except we have a “fifth columnist” in the person of Moneybags son, Tony, played by James Stewart last seen here trying to stave off suicide during the Christmas holidays and finding that his life, maybe life in general was wonderful who could give a fuck, excuse my English about money and power but is head over heels for Gramp’s granddaughter, Alice played by Jean Arthur who I don’t recall reviewing in any pervious film review. Of course Mayfair swell Moneybags and his expensive wife and Gramps and his voluntary poverty are like oil and water-don’t mix and so a proposal of marriage gets slapped around for a while. Gets slapped around until Gramps in desperation to save his beloved granddaughter decided to sell that old haunted house to Moneybags and move on.

Another defeat for the poor and straightforward, right. No, a million times no, because we now have another way to resolve that class struggle those two angry 19^th century German political theorists invented. Get this. Tony who Moneybags had planned to have figurehead run the new weapons operation balked, told Moneybags, Dad, no way, He was leading in another direction, including one last ditch effort to marry Alice. The old man filled with remorse at the treatment of his son by him “repents” and forgoes that lucrative deal for a big play in the up-coming MIC action. Nice right, sweet reason, family comes first and no bloodshed. Fair is fair but I still wonder about those big guns Moneybags has behind him. A quirky look at the remnants of the class struggle the last time it reared its head big-time.