The Easy Way Out

The Bergers, a blue-collar Jewish family living in an overstuffed tenement and undone by the Depression, struggle through hard times and dream of a better future in this 1972 production of Clifford Odets' pungent play. Personalities and politics clash as Odets' mélange of characters try to survive on pennies a day. Walter Matthau plays cynical World War I amputee Moe Axelrod, and Leo Fuchs portrays the family's iron-willed leftist grandfather.

Haunted by his mysterious past, a devoted high school football coach leads a scrawny team of orphans to the state championship during the Great Depression and inspires a broken nation along the way.

The film is about an unemployed banker, Henri Verdoux, and his sociopathic methods of attaining income. While being both loyal and competent in his work, Verdoux has been laid-off. To make money for his wife and child, he marries wealthy widows and then murders them. His crime spree eventually works against him when two particular widows break his normal routine.

Nelly Don the Musical Movie is a true Kansas City story about Nelly Don, a trailblazer who ignited a fashion revolution in the early 1900s to become a global sensation. Yet on the coattails of her success, drama ensues from an abusive husband and affair with a US Senator to the fake adoption of her biological son and her mobster-linked abduction. History comes alive with music, propelling the sensational story of her meteoric rise to fame in the fashion industry.

During the Great Depression, a con man finds himself saddled with a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, and the two forge an unlikely partnership.

A runaway orphan, young Sonora, persists in a menial job mucking stables in Doc Carver's travelling stunt show. Her great wish is to become a death-defying "diving girl," but Doc refuses her pleas. Undaunted, Sonora's gutsy resolve finally convinces him to give her a break. On the brink of stardom, however, a cruel twist of fate threatens to destroy her dream.

A young man befriends the last surviving Civil War veteran, intending to rob him of $50,000.

One day Sammy and his younger sister Ellie happen upon a cabin where Alice, a young, partially deaf girl with epilepsy is being kept by her abusive stepfather. The three soon become friends and hope to get Alice an education and help her escape from the torture she undergoes daily. However, Alice's stepfather soon finds out about the friendship Alice has struck up and punishes her brutally. This story of friendship and youth shows that everyone is human and deserves to be treated so, no matter their disability or weakness.

In the depression, Chaney, a strong silent streetfighter, joins with Speed, a promoter of no-holds-barred street boxing bouts. They go to New Orleans where Speed borrows money to set up fights for Chaney, but Speed gambles away any winnings.

After the funeral of one of their own, a criminal family decides to embark on an emotionally unnerving journey in an attempt to exact bloody revenge.

In 1935 rural Texas, recently widowed Edna Spaulding struggles to survive with two small children, a farm to run, and very little money in the bank - not to mention a deadly tornado and the unwelcome presence of the Ku Klux Klan. Edna is aided by her beautician sister, Margaret; a blind boarder, Mr. Will; and a would-be thief, Moze, who decides to teach Edna how to plant and harvest cotton.

This holiday tale has all the elements of a classic heartwarmer--cuddly dogs, small town spirit, and even a full-fledged Christmas pageant. Set during the meager years of the Great Depression, 12 DOGS OF CHRISTMAS follows the story of Emma, a 12-year-old who is sent to live in Doverville, a rural town, with her aunt. The town has, like the rest of the nation, fallen on lean times and seem to have lost all interest in celebrating. However, Emma manages to enlist the town's dogs into a colorful holiday pageant that reminds the inhabitants that even the Great Depression cannot ruin the spirit of Christmas.

Longtime friends become feuding mothers-in-law when their children marry.

A group of ruthless Chicago mob enforcers are sent to Kansas City to settle things with the owner of a slaughterhouse who has taken money that is not his to keep.

Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.

America is in the depths of the Great Depression. Families drift apart when faraway jobs beckon. A courageous young girl confronts overwhelming odds when she embarks on a cross-country search for her father. During her odyssey, she forms a close bond with two diverse traveling companions: a magnificent, protective wolf, and a hardened drifter.

Phar Lap, the big bold chestnut reigned as the king of the turf in the depression that gripped Australia of the 1930s. From his humble beginnings the New Zealand bred horse raced on to become the hero of a nation.

During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent schoolteacher.

Mazie, a poor orphan girl, is mistreated by cruel farmer Slag and his wife for whom she works. Mazie, who is growing into a woman, does not like they way Slag has been looking at her lately.

A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.