You Can't Take It With You (1938)

Grandpa Vanderhoff: This was her room too. Did you ever notice the peculiar fragrance?
Alice Sycamore: Yes, but I never knew what it was.
Grandpa Vanderhoff: It's hers. It's never left here -- she hasn't either. I can still hear the tinkle of her thin little voice -- see her eyes laughing. That's the reason I've lived in this house so many years -- could never move out -- would be like moving out on grandma.

---

Wilbur G. Henderson (Internal Revenue Department):: Mr. Vanderhoff, our records show that you've never paid an income tax.
Grandpa Vanderhoff: That's right.
Wilbur G. Henderson (Internal Revenue Department):: Why not?
Grandpa Vanderhoff: I don't believe in it.

---

Tony Kirby: I was just thinking about that family of yours. Living with them must be like living in a world of Walt Disney. Everybody does just as he pleases, doesn't he?
Alice Sycamore: Yes, Grandpa started it. He just suddenly left business one day. He started up in the elevator, turned around and came right down again -- and never went back. He could have been a rich man, but said he wasn't having any fun.

---

read more quotes from You Can't Take It With You...

Frank Capra first became aware of the play when he caught a performance of it when he was in New York in 1937 for the premiere of Lost Horizon. He tried to persuade Columbia boss Harry Cohn to buy the rights but Cohn refused, partly because he baulked at the prospect of shelling out what he considered to be the exorbitant sum of $200,000 for the rights, but mainly because he was still smarting from the lost battles he'd had with Capra over the final edit of Lost Horizon. Capra too was out of sorts with Cohn as he objected strongly to the Columbia boss trying to market the Jean Arthur film If You Could Only Cook in Britain as one of his own. A court case ensued, only being resolved in November 1937, with the proviso that Columbia buy the rights to the play and assign the project to Capra.
Debut of Dub Taylor.
The first James Stewart and Frank Capra collaboration.
read more facts about You Can't Take It With You...