I Remember Mama

Early-20th-century San Francisco is the setting for this cosy story about a family of Norwegian immigrants and their struggle for survival. Irene Dunne brings her usual class and charm to the role of the matriarch who holds everyone together and Barbara Bel Geddes plays the daughter and future novelist who records day-to-day life in her diary. Directed by George Stevens with a warm heart and a diverting way with a cliché, it also has a knockout performance by Cedric Hardwicke as a run-down old actor who reads from his own (unpublished) works but never seems to be able to pay the rent.