Family-Themed Films Over 40 Years Old-Good Then,Good Now
by horn-5 | created - 15 Mar 2014 | updated - 16 Mar 2014 | PublicFilms about families.
Theatrical-release movie only. No televison series.
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1. Spencer's Mountain (1963)
Approved | 118 min | Drama, Family
Grand Teton quarryman and family patriarch carefully navigates issues of religion and education in order to eke out a brighter future for his family.
Director: Delmer Daves | Stars: Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, James MacArthur, Donald Crisp
Votes: 3,210
2. Since You Went Away (1944)
Approved | 177 min | Drama, Romance, War
With her husband away to fight in World War II, a housewife must care for their two daughters alone.
Directors: John Cromwell, Edward F. Cline, Tay Garnett, David O. Selznick | Stars: Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple
Votes: 5,096
3. The Yearling (1946)
Approved | 128 min | Drama, Family, Western
A boy persuades his parents to allow him to adopt a young deer, but what will happen if the deer misbehaves?
Director: Clarence Brown | Stars: Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, Claude Jarman Jr., Chill Wills
Votes: 6,467 | Gross: $5.20M
4. There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
Approved | 117 min | Comedy, Drama, Musical
Molly and Terry Donahue, plus their three children, are The Five Donahues. Son Tim meets hat-check girl Vicky and the family act begins to fall apart.
Director: Walter Lang | Stars: Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe, Donald O'Connor, Dan Dailey
Votes: 6,699
5. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Approved | 170 min | Drama, Romance, War
Three World War II veterans, two of them traumatized or disabled, return home to the American midwest to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Fredric March, Teresa Wright
Votes: 70,516 | Gross: $23.65M
6. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
PG | 129 min | Drama, Family, Romance
Encouraged by her idealistic if luckless father, a bright and imaginative young woman comes of age in a Brooklyn tenement during the early 1900s.
Director: Elia Kazan | Stars: Dorothy McGuire, Joan Blondell, James Dunn, Lloyd Nolan
Votes: 8,406
7. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Passed | 126 min | Biography, Drama, Family
The life of the renowned musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer, and singer George M. Cohan.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf
Votes: 16,857 | Gross: $11.80M
8. Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945)
Passed | 105 min | Drama, Family
A Norwegian farmer lovingly raises his daughter in rural World War II-era Benson Junction, Wisconsin.
Director: Roy Rowland | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Margaret O'Brien, James Craig, Frances Gifford
Votes: 2,345
9. State Fair (1945)
Passed | 100 min | Comedy, Drama, Musical
Each member of the Frake clan has his/her own reason for attending the annual Iowa State Fair.
Director: Walter Lang | Stars: Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes, Vivian Blaine
Votes: 4,494
10. Penny Serenade (1941)
Not Rated | 119 min | Drama, Romance
A couple's big dreams give way to a life full of unexpected sadness and unexpected joy.
Director: George Stevens | Stars: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Beulah Bondi, Edgar Buchanan
Votes: 8,057
11. How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Passed | 118 min | Drama, Family
At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans, he stern, she gentle, raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life.
Director: John Ford | Stars: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp
Votes: 26,479
12. Mrs. Miniver (1942)
Approved | 134 min | Drama, Romance, War
A British family struggles to survive the first months of World War II.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, May Whitty
Votes: 19,462 | Gross: $13.50M
13. Journey for Margaret (1942)
Passed | 81 min | Drama, Romance, War
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.
Directors: W.S. Van Dyke, Herbert Kline | Stars: Robert Young, Laraine Day, Fay Bainter, Nigel Bruce
Votes: 965
14. You Can't Take It with You (1938)
Passed | 126 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
The son of a snobbish Wall Street banker becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family not realizing that his father is trying to force her family from their home for a real estate development.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold
Votes: 27,905 | Gross: $4.66M
15. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
PG | 130 min | Drama, Family, Fantasy
An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell
Votes: 498,971
16. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Not Rated | 96 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
After a divorced New York mother hires a nice old man to play Santa Claus at Macy's, she is startled by his claim to be the genuine article. When his sanity is questioned, a lawyer defends him in court by arguing that he's not mistaken.
Director: George Seaton | Stars: Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Gene Lockhart
Votes: 54,901 | Gross: $2.65M
17. Shenandoah (1965)
Approved | 105 min | Drama, War, Western
A Virginia farmer who has vowed to remain neutral during the Civil War is spurred into action when his youngest son is taken by Union soldiers.
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen | Stars: James Stewart, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Patrick Wayne
Votes: 9,624
18. Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Passed | 137 min | Drama, Family, Romance
The pacifist attitude of a Quaker family is tested as a result of the American Civil War.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Richard Eyer
Votes: 7,734
19. Little Women (1933)
Passed | 115 min | Drama, Family, Romance
A chronicle of the lives of sisters growing up in 19th-century New England.
Director: George Cukor | Stars: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas, Edna May Oliver
Votes: 7,931 | Gross: $4.58M
20. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Passed | 113 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
Young love and childish fears highlight a year in the life of a turn-of-the-century family.
Director: Vincente Minnelli | Stars: Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer
Votes: 27,675 | Gross: $7.57M
21. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Passed | 129 min | Drama
An Oklahoma family, driven off their farm by the poverty and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl, joins the westward migration to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.
Director: John Ford | Stars: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin
Votes: 99,919 | Gross: $0.06M
22. The Farmer's Daughter (1947)
Unrated | 97 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
After leaving her family's farm to study nursing in the city, a young woman finds herself on an unexpected path towards politics.
Director: H.C. Potter | Stars: Loretta Young, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymore, Charles Bickford
Votes: 2,880
23. I Remember Mama (1948)
Approved | 134 min | Drama, Family
A young writer recalls her ups and downs of growing up as one of four children to Norwegian immigrant parents in 1910s San Francisco.
Director: George Stevens | Stars: Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Homolka, Philip Dorn
Votes: 6,001
24. The Seven Little Foys (1955)
Approved | 93 min | Biography, Comedy, Drama
After the young wife of vaudevillian Eddie Foy passes away, he incorporates their seven children into the act and takes it on the road.
Director: Melville Shavelson | Stars: Bob Hope, Milly Vitale, George Tobias, Angela Clarke
Votes: 1,628
25. Pride and Prejudice (1940)
Approved | 118 min | Drama, Romance
The arrival of wealthy bachelors in town causes an uproar when families with single daughters aggressively seek engagements, including the Bennet family, with five eligible daughters.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard | Stars: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland, Edna May Oliver
Votes: 9,221
26. A Christmas Carol (1951)
TV-PG | 86 min | Drama, Family, Fantasy
Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly, miserly businessman, has no time for sentimentality and largely views Christmas as a waste of time. However, this Christmas Eve, he will be visited by three spirits who will show him the error of his ways.
Director: Brian Desmond Hurst | Stars: Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns
Votes: 25,722
27. On Borrowed Time (1939)
Passed | 99 min | Drama, Family, Fantasy
A cantankerous old man takes in his beloved, orphaned grandson, whom he must protect at all costs with the help of an agent of Death and a magical apple tree.
Director: Harold S. Bucquet | Stars: Lionel Barrymore, Cedric Hardwicke, Beulah Bondi, Una Merkel
Votes: 2,251
28. You're Only Young Once (1937)
Passed | 78 min | Comedy, Family, Romance
On vacation with his family on California's Catalina Island, Andy Hardy falls head over swim fins for a sophisticated young beauty. Judge Hardy warns his son that she is too fast for him.
Director: George B. Seitz | Stars: Lewis Stone, Cecilia Parker, Mickey Rooney, Fay Holden
Votes: 557
29. The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
Passed | 109 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Elizabeth Barrett's tyrannical father has forbidden any of his family to marry. Nevertheless, Elizabeth falls in love with the poet Robert Browning.
Director: Sidney Franklin | Stars: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan
Votes: 2,128
30. Devotion (1946)
Passed | 107 min | Biography, Drama, Mystery
Genius authors Emily and Charlotte Brontë fall in love with their curate as they seek to get their work published.
Director: Curtis Bernhardt | Stars: Olivia de Havilland, Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet
Votes: 1,014
31. Alice Adams (1935)
Passed | 99 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A working-class girl is thwarted and embarrassed in her attempts to move up socially by her gauche family and unstable father.
Director: George Stevens | Stars: Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Evelyn Venable
Votes: 4,562
32. My Man Godfrey (1936)
Approved | 94 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A scatterbrained socialite hires a vagrant as a family butler - but there's more to Godfrey than meets the eye.
Director: Gregory La Cava | Stars: William Powell, Carole Lombard, Alice Brady, Gail Patrick
Votes: 26,442
33. Life with Father (1947)
Passed | 118 min | Comedy, Family
A straitlaced turn-of-the-century father presides over a family of boys and the mother who really rules the roost.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: William Powell, Irene Dunne, Elizabeth Taylor, Edmund Gwenn
Votes: 6,394
34. The Parent Trap (1961)
Passed | 129 min | Comedy, Family, Romance
Teenage twin sisters swap places and scheme to reunite their divorced parents.
Director: David Swift | Stars: Hayley Mills, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Charles Ruggles
Votes: 23,961
35. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
Approved | 102 min | Musical, Romance, Western
In 1850 Oregon, when a backwoodsman brings a wife home to his farm, his six brothers decide that they want to get married too.
Director: Stanley Donen | Stars: Jane Powell, Howard Keel, Jeff Richards, Russ Tamblyn
Votes: 27,079 | Gross: $9.40M
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