(A young Mickey Rooney stars as a race car driver determin...)
A young Mickey Rooney stars as a race car driver determined to live up to his father's legacy. A fast paced racing adventure that follows Rooney from mechanic to driver. Featuring some great race footage geared towards the Indy 500 of the time. Directed by Edward Ludwig. Written by Robert Smith. Produced by Harry M. Popkin, Samuel H. Stiefel, Jack Dempsey, and Mort Briskin. Cinematography by Ernest Laszlo.
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(It's excitement for The Jones Family down at Aunt Ida's f...)
It's excitement for The Jones Family down at Aunt Ida's farm — from a cornhusking contest to Pa Jones' involvement in the local politics. Jed Prouty, Spring Byington, Louise Fazenda and Russell Gleason star in this 1938 classic. Shown in 4:3 full frame presentation.
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(When a little orphan boy receives a genuine ray gun that ...)
When a little orphan boy receives a genuine ray gun that compels anyone caught in its beam to tell the truth, he uses it to help a couple fall in love and prevent his orphanage from being shut down by creditors. Shown in 4:3 full frame presentation.
When sold by Amazon.com, this product will be manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
(December Bride Collection - Classic TV Shows. This collec...)
December Bride Collection - Classic TV Shows. This collection of extremely rare TV shows includes 24 half-hour episodes. December Bride aired from 1954 to 1959 starring Spring Byington. The collection comes in one volume, six DVDs with interactive menus. These December Bride TV shows have been carefully selected from archival films. State of the art technology has been used to present the highest quality production. Good quality masters are hard to acquire. Therefore imperfections in image and sound quality are unavoidable. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Spring Byington was an American actress. She is noted for her comedic performances and also she was an Academy Award nominee for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Penelope Sycamore in You Can't Take It with You (1938).
Background
Spring Byington was born on October 17, 1893 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the daughter of Edwin Lee Byington, an English instructor, and Helene Cleghorn, a physician. Named after a family friend, Byington attended public schools in Colorado.
Career
Byington began Spring Byington acting career at the age of fourteen. Through her mother's friendship with Mrs. Elitch Long, she became associated with the famous Elitch Garden Stock Company in Denver, Colorado, for three years beginning in 1907. She then went on tour with other stock companies in Toledo, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Indianapolis, Indiana.
In 1924 Byington made her Broadway debut in a small part in George Kaufman and Marc Connelly's satirical comedy, Beggar on Horseback. Between 1924 and 1934 she acted on the Broadway stage in twenty plays, always in a supporting role. Some of her more notable performances were in Weak Sisters (1925), Puppy Love (1926), The Merchant of Venice (1928), Tonight at Twelve (1928), and Ladies Don't Lie (1929).
In 1933 Byington began her movie career in Little Women, playing the role of the motherly Marmee. She worked without interruption for thirty-seven years, acting in almost one hundred films, while never being signed by any studio.
She played the mother in three 1935 films, Mutiny on the Bounty, Way Down East, and Ah! Wilderness. During the 1930's she was also Mother Jones in the series of seventeen low-budget, popular, and profitable The Jones Family feature films for Twentieth Century-Fox. She continued as Mickey Rooney's mother in A Family Affair (1937), the first of the Andy Hardy pictures.
Other notable performances in mother roles were in I'll Be Seeing You (1944) and My Brother Talks to Horses (1946).
She depicted other sympathetic and supportive characters in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), and When Ladies Meet (1941), where she recreated her Broadway role as the heroine's confidant. She also played Judy Garland's co-worker at the music shop in In the Good Old Summertime (1949), the wife of a general in Mario Lanza's Because You're Mine (1957), and a nun in Angels in the Outfield (1951).
An exception to her wholesome pleasant screen image came when she played a demented housekeeper in Dragonwyck (1946).
Her only leading role, and her favorite, was as Louisa in the 1950 comedy of the same name, in which she impersonated a crotchety widow who became transformed when she discovered new love. She ended her film career in the way she knew best, as the slightly addled mother of Doris Day in Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
During the 1950's Byington's successful career of playing everyone's mother was transferred to radio and television.
Byington played Lily Ruskin in the comedy, "December Bride", an aging, young-at-heart, mischievous mother who moved in with her daughter Frances Rafferty and her son-in-law. Each episode had Lily, along with her neighbor and cohort, Verna Felton, disrupting the domestic bliss of the household. Look magazine called the two "TV's happiest outlaws. "
She loved the part of Lily, a type of role she had perfected over the years in the theater and on film. Byington was in her sixties when she starred on "December Bride"; she credited it with keeping her young and alert because "Lily is a kid all the way. " The series ran in syndication after 1959, including in several foreign countries.
Byington later played the cook in the television program "Laramie" and made guest appearances in other shows such as "I Dream of Jeannie, " "Batman, " and the television movie, The Money Maker.
In 1956 she extended her motherly role to print when she began writing an advice column, "What Shall I Do?" for the monthly publication Photoplay. Byington lived a quiet life alone in a small house in Hollywood Hills, California. Even at the height of her popularity, she rarely participated in the entertainment social scene. She preferred time with her daughters' families, reading (especially science fiction), cooking, and attending plays and movies. She died of cancer at her home.
Spring Byington was the quintessential supporting actress, both in the roles she was given to portray and the manner in which she portrayed them. Most of her film appearances were in light domestic comedies, and her characters were usually motherly types.
Byington was successful at playing motherly types because she looked and acted like everyone's ideal mother. The small actress exuded warmth and understanding and also possessed a twinkling eye that hinted at mischief.
Quotations:
Byington expressed her attitude toward motherhood in these words, "Mothers scheme and plan and love with all the versatility of a three-ring circus. "
When asked why she favored light-hearted comedic roles to more heavy substantive ones, she replied, "Lady Macbeth and I aren't friends. "
Personality
Her characterizations were described as warm, whimsical, amusing, darling, sparkling, impishly chic, fluttery, young-in-spirit, pixilated, and dithery. Sometimes her portrayals exhibited mischief but never malice.
Quotes from others about the person
Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times lauded her performance as Janet Cannot in The Great Adventure (1926) as "simple, attractive, dignified, and illuminating, without any of the superfluous scroll work which is often confused with acting. "
Connections
Her pre-Broadway experience also included trips with acting companies to Canada, Argentina, and Brazil. The manager of the acting troupe that toured Brazil was Roy Carey Chandler, whom Byington married. They had two daughters before their divorce. It was Byington's only marriage.