Director George Stevens made his transition from breezy pre-war films to the acclaimed masterworks of his later career with this tender charmer about a Norwegian immigrant family in 1910 San Francisco. Irene Dunne (as Mama), Barbara Bel Geddes (the matriarch of a vastly different family in TV's Dallas), Oscar Homolka and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton on The Waltons) all earned Academy Award nominations, giving performances embraced in the smile-making glow of a bygone era, ties that endure, and, most of all, Mama.