(December 28, 1936)

You Can't Take It With You demonstrates that a pair of showmen can confect a magnificently funny show without bothering much about the plot. The plot of You Can't Take It With You is deliberately banal. Two young lovers are nearly parted because of their families, a dramatic situation which has not grown any younger since Pyramus & Thisbe. So theatrically threadbare is this narrative scheme that it takes an ignited dish of red fire to bring down the first act curtain, an off-stage explosion to close Act II. These punctuations are, however, not really necessary for in creating Grandpa Vanderhof (Henry Traver) and his clan--the Girl's family which the Boy's family views with alarm--the playwrights have conjured a species of dramatis personae which transcends plot, bursts the bonds of the established theatre and mounts into the stratosphere of great literary lunacy.