AWARDS AND HONORS

You Can't Take It with You was nominated for seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Spring Byington), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay. It won two for Best Picture and Best Director.

THE CRITIC'S CORNER – YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938)

"One of the most utterly irresistible, delightful, human and entertaining films I have ever seen." – New York Telegram

"Not only the year's best film, it is one of the finest on record." -- New York Sun

"The comedy is wholly American, wholesome, homespun, human, appealing, and touching in turn....Miss Arthur, the very appealing quality of her speaking voice carrying her far on the screen and again here, acquits herself creditably. Stewart is not a strong romantic lead opposite her but does satisfactorily in the love scenes. Others are tops from Lionel Barrymore down...Riskin's adaptation, retaining as much of the original Kaufman-Hart dialog as possible, adding for other parts, represents a capable job. It was a one-man assignment of important propositions." -- Variety

"Columbia's film of the play, which moved into the Music Hall yesterday, has had to justify that Pulitzer award. Simply because it is a motion picture, and not a play, it has had to explore the Kaufman-Hart characters more thoroughly than the playwrights had need to...Frank Capra, its director, and Robert Riskin, its adapter, have vindicated that Pulitzer award, even at the expense of comedy...You Can't Take It with You isn't as comic on the screen as it was on the stage. At least, not in its total effect. When it chooses to be funny it can be funny as the dickens. But it chooses, too, on the screen, to be serious and, at times, moral and sentimental...It's a grand picture, which will disappoint only the most superficial admirers of the play. Columbia, besides contributing the services of its famous writing-directing team, has chosen its cast with miraculous wisdom. Lionel Barrymore's Grandpa is the least bit of a let-down after Henry Travers's playing of the role on Broadway, but we're willing to admit our dissatisfaction may be due to the fact that Mr. Travers's Grandpa came first. Beyond that prejudicial doubt we enthusiastically admire every one and everything--Jean Arthur's Alice Sycamore, James Stewart's honest young Kirby, Edward Arnold's badgered tycoon, Spring Byington's delightful Penny, Donald Meek's Mr. Poppins (a new one on Mr. Kaufman) and all the other names on the long cast sheet. And, before we forget it, You Can't Take It with You jumps smack into the list of the year's best." – The New York Times