I Remember Mama got several Academy Award nominations, but did not come up a winner. Actually there's quite a bit more to Uncle Chris than meets the eye. Dunne's sisters are scandalized by his behavior, he drinks and enjoys it and lives in 'sin' with Barbara O'Neil. This may have been Oscar Homolka's career role, he steals the film in every scene that he's in. The one Broadway cast member who repeats his Broadway role is Oscar Homolka as the free-wheeling, bellowing, Uncle Chris. Corby as the timid sister who is finally getting married to the equally timid Edgar Bergen is very touching. The three are played by Hope Landin, Edith Evanson, and Ellen Corby. Dunne's got three sisters who are quite the hoot in their visits and problems. She's a tower of stability in managing both the home and finances of a family just living on the edge. Papa as played by Phillip Dorn is a kindly man and a good provider, but it's Irene Dunne's Mama who is the center of the Hansen family. The film is narrated by Barbara Bel Geddes playing young Katarina and it's through her eyes we see the trials of a Norwegian immigrant family growing up in San Francisco, rebuilding after the earthquake. The play by John Van Druten is the dramatization of Kathryn Forbes's novel Mama's Bank Account. That original cast included a man making his Broadway debut named Marlon Brando as Nels. With one glorious exception, none of the Broadway original cast made it to the screen. I Remember Mama had come off a highly successful two year run on Broadway of 713 performances with Mady Christians playing the lead. The film had a built in audience already. Dunne who made herself plain in order to be beautiful is that good an actress. It'a hard to believe that this is the glamorous manager of Roberta's or Cary Grant's fashionable wife in The Awful Truth. For her fifth and final Oscar nomination for Best Actress, Irene Dunne aged herself a might, took the Scandinavian accent from Loretta Young who won an Oscar the year before in The Farmer's Daughter and did a wonderful job in the lead role of I Remember Mama.
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