Dodsworth is a 1936 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by William Wyler

William Wyler

William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...

. Sidney Howard

Sidney Howard

Sidney Coe Howard was an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for Gone with the Wind.-Early life:...

 based the screenplay on his 1934 stage adaptation

Dodsworth (play)

Dodsworth is a three-act play by Sidney Howard based on the 1929 novel by Sinclair Lewis. Through the title character, it examines the differences between American and European intellect, manners, and morals.-Synopsis:...

 of the 1929 novel of the same name

Dodsworth

Dodsworth is a satirical novel by American writer Sinclair Lewis first published by Harcourt Brace & Company in March 1929. Its subject, the differences between US and European intellect, manners, and morals, is one that frequently appears in the works of Henry James.-Plot summary:Samual 'Sam'...

 by Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...

. Through the title character, it examines the differences between US and European intellect, manners, and morals.

Synopsis

Middle-aged Sam Dodsworth is the head of Dodsworth Motor Company, an automobile manufacturing firm. His wife Fran, a shallow and vain woman obsessed with the notion of growing old, convinces her spouse to sell his interest in the company and take her to Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. Before long, Fran begins to view herself as a sophisticated world traveler and Sam as boring and unimaginative. Searching for excitement in her life, she begins spending time with other men and eventually informs Sam that she's leaving him for a member of the nobility

Nobility

Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...

. While in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, Sam reunites with Edith Cortright, a divorcee he first met aboard the Queen Mary

RMS Queen Mary

RMS Queen Mary is a retired ocean liner that sailed primarily in the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line...

 en route to Europe, and the two fall in love. When Fran's plans to marry the nobleman fall through and she calls off the divorce, Sam rejoins her on a ship to sail back to America. In the climactic scene, Sam realizes his marriage to Fran is over. He gets off the ship at the last moment to rejoin Edith after he realizes just how much he cares for her.

Principal cast

• Walter Huston
  Walter Huston
  Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...
  
   ..... Sam Dodsworth
• Ruth Chatterton
  Ruth Chatterton
  Ruth Chatterton was an American actress, novelist, and early aviatrix.- Early life :Chatterton was born in New York City, on Christmas Eve 1892, to Walter Smith and Lillian Reed Chatterton...
  
   ..... Fran Dodsworth
• Paul Lukas
  Paul Lukas
  Paul Lukas was an Austrian-Hungarian-born actor.-Biography:Born Pál Lukács in Budapest, he arrived in Hollywood in 1927 after a successful stage and film career in Hungary, Germany and Austria where he worked with Max Reinhardt. He made his stage debut in Budapest in 1916 and his film debut in 1917...
  
   ..... Arnold Iselin
• Mary Astor
  Mary Astor
  Mary Astor was an American actress. Most remembered for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s.She eventually made a successful transition to talkies, but almost...
  
   ..... Mrs. Edith Cortright
• Kathryn Marlowe
  Kathryn Marlowe
  Kathryn Marlowe was an American film actress in the 1930s, most notably in Dodsworth, which starred Walter Huston, Mary Astor and Ruth Chatterton...
  
   ..... Emily Dodsworth McKee
• David Niven
  David Niven
  James David Graham Niven , known as David Niven, was a British actor and novelist, best known for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days and Sir Charles Lytton, a.k.a. "the Phantom", in The Pink Panther...
  
   ..... Captain Clyde Lockert
• Gregory Gaye
  Gregory Gaye
  Gregory Gaye was a Russian-American actor. The son of an actor, he was born Gregory De Gay in Petrograd, now known as St. Petersburg....
  
   ..... Baron Kurt Von Obersdorf
• Maria Ouspenskaya
  Maria Ouspenskaya
  Maria Alekseyevna Ouspenskaya was a Russian actress and acting teacher. She achieved success as a stage actress as a young woman in Russia, and as an elderly woman in Hollywood films.-Life and career:...
  
   .....Baroness Von Obersdorf
• Spring Byington
  Spring Byington
  Spring Byington was an American actress. Her career included a seven-year run on radio and television as the star of December Bride. She was a key MGM contract player appearing in films from the 1930s through the 1960s.-Early life:Byington was born Spring Dell Byington in Colorado Springs,...
  
   ..... Matey Pearson
• Odette Myrtil
  Odette Myrtil
  Odette Myrtil was an American actress, singer, and violinist of French birth. She began her career as a violinist on the vaudeville stage in Paris at the age of 14. She expanded out into acting and singing, and had her first major success at the age of 18 on the London stage in the 1916 musical...
  
   .... Renée De Penable

Production notes

Walter Huston

Walter Huston

Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...

 appeared in the 1934 Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production, which co-starred Fay Bainter

Fay Bainter

Fay Okell Bainter was an American film and stage actress.-Early life:She was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Charles F. Bainter and Mary Okell. In 1910, she was a traveling stage actress...

 as Fran. Huston recreated his role yet again for a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast in October 1937.

This was one of two 1936 films based on plays directed by William Wyler. The other was These Three

These Three

These Three is a 1936 American drama film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Lillian Hellman is based on her 1934 play The Children's Hour....

starring Miriam Hopkins

Miriam Hopkins

Ellen Miriam Hopkins was an American actress known for her versatility in a wide variety of roles.Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, a town in the state's southwest near the Alabama border...

 which was an adaptation of Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman

Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...

's The Children's Hour

The Children's Hour (play)

The Children's Hour is a 1934 stage play written by Lillian Hellman. It is a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. An angry student, Mary Tilford, runs away from the school and to avoid being sent back she tells her grandmother that the two...

that was sanitized to meet the Production Code

Production Code

The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...

's standards.

The film was named one of the year's ten best by the New York Times and was one of the top twenty box office

Box office

A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....

 films of the year.

In 1990, Dodsworth was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry

National Film Registry

The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...

. In 2005, Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

named it one of the 100 best movies of the past 80 years.

Principal production credits

• Producers
  Film producer
  A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
  
   ..... Samuel Goldwyn
  Samuel Goldwyn
  Samuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios.-Biography:...
  
  , Merritt Hulburd
• Original Music
  Film score
  A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
  
   ..... Alfred Newman
  Alfred Newman
  Alfred Newman was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of music for films.In a career which spanned over forty years, Newman composed music for over two hundred films. He was one of the most respected film score composers of his time, and is today regarded as one of the greatest...
  
  
• Cinematography
  Cinematography
  Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
  
   ..... Rudolph Maté
  Rudolph Maté
  Born in Kraków , Maté started in the film business after his graduation from the University of Budapest. He went on to work as an assistant cameraman in Hungary and later throughout Europe, sometimes with noted colleague Karl Freund...
  
  
• Art Direction
  Art director
  The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
  
   ..... Richard Day
• Costume Design
  Costume design
  Costume design is the fabrication of apparel for the overall appearance of a character or performer. This usually involves researching, designing and building the actual items from conception. Costumes may be for a theater or cinema performance but may not be limited to such...
  
   ..... Omar Kiam

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Frank S. Nugent described it as "admirable" and added, "William Wyler . . . has had the skill to execute it in cinematic terms, and a gifted cast has been able to bring the whole alive to our complete satisfaction . . . [the film] has done more than justice to Mr. Howard's play, converting a necessarily episodic tale . . . into a smooth-flowing narrative of sustained interest, well-defined performance and good talk."

Time said it was "directed with a proper understanding of its values by William Wyler, splendidly cast and brilliantly played."

Awards and nominations

The film was nominated in seven categories, winning for Best Art Direction.

• Academy Award for Best Picture
  Academy Award for Best Picture
  The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
  
   (nominee)
• Academy Award for Best Actor
  Academy Award for Best Actor
  Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
  
   (Walter Huston, nominee)
• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
  Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
  Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
  
   (Maria Ouspenskaya, nominee)
• Academy Award for Best Director
  Academy Award for Directing
  The Academy Award for Achievement in Directing , usually known as the Best Director Oscar, is one of the Awards of Merit presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to directors working in the motion picture industry...
  
   (nominee)
• Academy Award for Best Art Direction
  Academy Award for Best Art Direction
  The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
  
   (winner)
• Academy Award for Best Sound, Recording
  Academy Award for Sound
  The Academy Award for Sound Mixing is an Academy Award that recognizes the finest or most euphonic sound mixing or recording, and is generally awarded to the production sound mixers and re-recording mixers of the winning film. Compare this award to the Academy Award for Sound Editing...
  
   (Thomas T. Moulton
  Thomas T. Moulton
  Thomas T. Moulton was an American sound engineer. He won five Academy Awards in the category Sound Recording and was nominated for eleven more in the same category...
  
  ) (nominee)
• Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay
  Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
  The Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source...
  
   (nominee)

Dodsworth was nominated for AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies in 1997 and 2007.