Beulah Bondi Archives - Public Domain Tube

Our Town is a 1940 American drama romance film adaptation of a play of the same name by Thornton Wilder starring Martha Scott as Emily Webb, and William Holden as George Gibbs. The cast also included Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Guy Kibbee and Frank Craven. It was adapted by Harry Chandlee, Craven and Wilder, and directed by Sam Wood.

The residents of the small town of Grover’s Corners in New Hampshire live peacefully and in harmony. Dr. Gibbs, his wife Julie, and their two children George and Rebecca are the neighbors of the Webbs, who have a lovely daughter, Emily. George and Emily fall in love and after three years of advertising they get married. Time goes by and Emily becomes very sick with the birth of her second child. While she is dying, she meets all the people who have left this world in the years before. Emily, who remains in a kind of in-between world, remembers her previous life, but in the end the young woman decides to live and she wakes up from her dream. Wiki

This is a movie version of one of the most successful radio shows of the 1940s. Breakfast in Hollywood began airing in 1940 on Los Angeles station KFWB, and quickly became popular enough to be aired nationwide. It eventually aired on 3 networks, NBC, ABC and Mutual. The show lasted until 1948, when Breneman suddenly died and, failing to find a suitable replacement host, it was cancelled.

At the peak of its popularify, the radio version of Breakfast in Hollywood was estimated to reach a daily audience of ten million listeners.

This film provides a rare opportunity to see two of the most entertaining acts of the 1940s, each performing two musial numbers on camera. The Nat King Cole trio swings through both “Solid Potato Salad” and the jivey nonsense song “It’s Better to Be By Yourself.” Those crazy cats known as Spike Jones and His City Slickers pay musical tribute to “Hedda Hopper’s Hats,” and later perform one of their signature tunes, the jokes and sound effects laden wacky take on “Glow Worm.” IMDB

Tag: Beulah Bondi

Our Town 1940 w/ William Holden

Breakfast in Hollywood 1946