One More Spring

United States

1935

87 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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SCR Edwin J. Burke, Robert Nathan

CAST Janet Gaynor, Warner Baxter, Walter Woolf King, Jane Darwell, Roger Imhof, Grant Mitchell, Rosemary Ames, John Qualen, Dick Foran, Astrid Allwyn, Lee Kohlmar, Stepin Fetchit

MUSIC David Buttolph, Arthur Lange

Synopsis

One More Spring is a delicate, sensitive drama about three lost souls trying to survive during the Depression: two men and a woman, all jobless and homeless, who set up housekeeping together in the maintenance shed in Central Park. The woman is played by Janet Gaynor, a popular ingenue of the early 1930s who usually played virginal good-girl roles. In One More Spring, she lives in a one-room shack with two men (literally “shacking up” with them), and it’s very much to Gaynor’s credit as an actress that she manages to convince us there’s no hanky-panky going on. She’s living in a shack with two men, simply because things are desperate and her only alternative is to live in the streets. Her two shackmates are well-played by Warner Baxter and Walter Woolf King. (King, who usually played villainous roles, is remarkably sympathetic here.) —IMDb

Director

Henry King

After a start as a stage actor, Henry Kingbegan appearing in films in 1912, and by 1915 was directing. King made numerous dramas, westerns, and actioners over the teens, achieving special distinction with his 1919 comedy 23-1/2 Hours Leave. Two years later he co-wrote, produced, and directed the landmark rural drama Tol’able David; his other important works of the ‘20s include The White Sister (1923), Romola (1925), and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926). A prolific and reliable craftsman, King made numerous handsome films into the early 1960s, most notably two outstanding films with Gregory Peck: a psychological drama of World War II, Twelve O’Clock High (1942), and the moody, intelligent western The Gunfighter (1950). King’s career is also notable for his feeling for Americana, as found in 1930s projects as different as State Fair (1933), Jesse James (1939), and In Old Chicago (1938), as well as in such later films as Remember the Day (1941) and Wait ’Til the Sun Shines, Nellie… read more