You Can't Take It With You (1938)

Director: Frank Capra

Picture an avuncular fellow on crutches, whom everybody knows as Grandpa (Lionel Barrymore).  He’s at a bank, and he’s chatting with the teller, Mr. Poppins, a nervous little man who doesn’t particularly like his job.  He’d much rather tinker and make ingenious gadgets.  So Grandpa invites him to leave the bank and come and live at his house.  At Grandpa’s house, everybody does what he wants to do – learn ballet, write plays, concoct fireworks, play the harmonica, do acrobatics, whatever.
     “But how would I live?” asks the teller.
     “The same way we do.”
     “The same way.  Well, who takes care of you?”
     “The same One,” says Grandpa, “that takes care of the lilies of the field, Mr. Poppins, except that we toil a little, spin a little, and have a lot of fun.”
     That scene comes from Frank Capra’s uproarious romantic comedy, You Can’t Take It With You (1938), which is also a shrewd commentary upon how people end up living lives they don’t like, because they’re motivated …