Silver Creek, Vermont is in the depths of the depression, and everybody has to borrow a nickle in order to rub it together with the only other one they have. The plot concerns the misunderstanding of $1000 used to pay a debt when the money wasn't theirs to begin with. This isn't about theft, but greed, desperation, and retribution. A wonderful cast of character performers (most notably Charles Winninger, Florence Bates and Gene Lockhart) surround some younger romantic leads (William Lundigan and Marsha Hunt among them), but it is the portly older folk, who get the juiciest material. Bates, as the town's matriarch, is kind-hearted with most of her creditors, only ruthless when she discovers the shadiness of one of her tenants who cranked up prices in his grocery store after finding out she had raised salaries in her now closed factory, helping send the town into bankruptcy when the depression hit. She stings with lines like, "I'll never forget a face, and I'll always remember both of yours".
There's a Capra-esque feeling to this, with its lesson on greed, a comic case of misunderstanding underlying the dramatic set-up. This seems appropriate to the post war problem of paranoia which was overtaking the country, foreshadowing many problems that had been backburnered when America entered the war, and for that reason, has an important social significance to it. Lockhart is particularly truthful when the greedy storekeeper reminds him of their life-long friendship, to which he responds, "Well, we have known each other for many years", really striking the heart of what friendship is really all about.
There's a Capra-esque feeling to this, with its lesson on greed, a comic case of misunderstanding underlying the dramatic set-up. This seems appropriate to the post war problem of paranoia which was overtaking the country, foreshadowing many problems that had been backburnered when America entered the war, and for that reason, has an important social significance to it. Lockhart is particularly truthful when the greedy storekeeper reminds him of their life-long friendship, to which he responds, "Well, we have known each other for many years", really striking the heart of what friendship is really all about.