Mama didn't leave the Old Country and move into the Larkin Street house to become rich. She left because all her siblings and in-laws were already setting down roots in the USA. Family was where Mama always fit best. Right in the heart of things.

Director George Stevens made his transition from breezy prewar films to the acclaimed masterworks of his later career with this tender charmer about a Norwegian immigrant family in 1910 San Francisco. Irene Dunne (as Mama), Barbara Bel Gedde (the matriarch of a very different family in TV's Dallas). Oscar Homolka and Ellen Corby (Grandma on The Waltons) all earned Academy Award nominations, giving performances embraced in the smile-making glow of a bygone era, ties that endure and, most of all, Mama.