fay bainter

A family man. (Lionel Barrymore) becomes innocently involved in an embezzlement.

In the 1810s, an old maid poses as her own niece in order to teach her onetime beau a lesson.

A Russian courier struggles to deliver a message to the troops fighting Tartar invaders.

An elderly couple are forced to live hundreds of miles apart when they lose their house and none of their five children will take both parents in.

A homeless woman named Hannah drifts into the lives of the kindly Ward family, in a small Indiana town in 1919. Hannah makes herself useful as a cook and housekeeper and stays with the Wards... but her real interest is in meeting their neighbor, teenager Peter Trimble. It turns out that Peter is the son she bore out of wedlock and gave up for adoption, and now Hannah has returned to town to see what sort of young man her son has become.

In 1850s Louisiana, a free-spirited Southern belle loses her fiancé due to her stubborn vanity and pride, and vows to win him back.

An 1890s widow has two daughters and two sons. The daughters fall in love with the same gentleman.

A folksy drifter (Bob Burns) helps an old friend's widow (Fay Bainter) and daughter (Jean Parker) save their newspaper.

A nightclub dancer marries into high society and has to contend with her jealous sister-in-law.

Having recently met at a literary tea, emancipated Ann Murray has invited Titus Jaywood, referred to as Jay in familiar circumstances, to spend the weekend with her and her family in New Brighton for some much needed relaxation and for him to read and possibly publish her stories. Ann's husband, Lewis Murray, is much more conservative than his liberal wife but is generally broad minded. Jay's hope for that relaxing weekend is quickly thrown out the window with the goings-on of Ann's family. Her mother, septuagenarian Mrs. Whitman, is overly inquisitive and slyly meddling. Lewis' sister, Connie Nevins, is arriving from Reno following her third divorce, no single man, like Jay, safe in her search for husband number four. But most of the commotion this weekend surrounds Lewis and Ann's twenty year old daughter, recent college graduate and yet to be employed Ellen Murray. Ellen and her Boston-residing boyfriend Douglas Hall, who the family has yet to meet, have had one problem after another in their relationship. However this weekend, they have finally come to a mutual understanding that they love each other, bad timing in that Doug is leaving at the end of the weekend for two years to work in Belgium to earn money to start his life. As such, it isn't the right time for them to get married without that financial foundation with both Doug and Ellen having no money of their own. Instead of spending the weekend in Hartford at a girlfriend's as was her plan, Ellen suggests she and Doug spend the weekend together alone before he goes away, something she doesn't want to tell anyone in they probably viewing it with suspicion. When Ann gets wind of what Ellen is planning on doing, she has to decide whether to stop her or to trust her in that they will not do anything inappropriate, she knowing Lewis never approving of Ellen's plan. A factor in the situation is the secret or not so secret fact that Ann and Jay really used to be in Ellen and Doug's position when they were younger - Jay the nameless poet in Ann's life, a poet of who the family is aware - they losing touch possibly the only reason why they aren't married to each other today, with Ann's invitation to Jay for this weekend truly only for the aforementioned reasons and nothing more.

Society-lady Hattie Leonard organizes her own band of 'gang-busters' when she discovers a garment she sent to the dry-cleaners had been taxed 25 cents to pay for gang 'protection.' She sends to New York City for a reformed gangster she had befriended, Frankie O'Fallon, and he hires the manpower needed from the usual Columbia hoods. Her gang hijacks the racketeers, recovers the merchant's money and returns it to them. Lila Thorne, engaged to Hattie's son Fred, throws in with her future mother-in-law when she sees that the old lady is fighting for the American principle of freedom of choice...and action. Lila frames the gang-leader, George Watson, and Hattie's big-city vigilantes kidnap him and extract the information that the town-mayor, Johnny "J.J." Jones, is the brains behind the protection-gang and is getting the big cut of the money. But Hattie must still rob a bank before she can secure the evidence needed to convict the mayor. All in a day's work for a crusading society dame.

A single mother of four young-adult daughters is just about to remarry when her first husband returns 20 years after deserting his family.

The Carter family falls on hard times after Doc Carter loses his drugstore and has to settle for working in a factory. Their friend Bill Hastings offers to take in one of the Carter children in order to ease the burden.

Since he was a child, Thomas Alba Edison began carrying out his first chemical experiments in the basement of his house. In addition, he had to practice multiple occupations before he could register his first patent.

Change comes slowly to a small New Hampshire town in the early 20th century.

Father's return from the insane asylum spells calamity for the Fairfield family.

A woman tormented by the hunting death of her husband forbids her son to have anything to do with horses. But after he falls for the daughter of his father's trainer, he defies his mother by entering the Maryland Hunt.

Penny Morris and Tommy Williams are both starstruck young teens but nobody seems to give them any chance to perform. Instead, they decide to put up their own show to collect money for a summer camp for the kids.

Sportswriter Sam Craig and columnist Tess Harding, with the same New York newspaper, overcome their initial antagonism, fall in love and get married, only to find their relationship strained when he comes to resent her hectic lifestyle.

Documentary short film depicting the work of the United Service Organizations (USO) in providing recreational and morale-boosting services for American troops.

A Washington official courts a society matron who is trying to ignore the effects of World War II.

In the shanty town called the Cabbage Patch, Mrs. Wiggs scrabbles for survival with her brood of children and hopes for the return of her husband, who left many years before.

John Davis, a married American newspaper reporter in London, covers the story of a home for children displaced by the war and meets two kids who grow attached to him.

Teenager Homer Macauley stays at home in small-town Ithaca to support his family while his older brother Marcus prepares to go to war.

Small-town Indiana girl Lily Mars dreams to be a stage actress. She begs visiting Broadway producer John Thornway for a role but he dismisses her as an amateur. She follows him to New York and worms her way into his show, and his heart.