Joy of Living (1938)

Margaret Garret - Maggie to her friends - is a Broadway star, just starting the run of her latest show, "Glamour". She comes from a humble background and worked her way up the ranks. She now supports her family - her parents Dennis and Minerva Garret, her sister Salina Pine and Salina's family of her husband Bert Pine and their precocious infant twin daughters, Betsy and Dotsy Pine - who all live with Maggie in her home. Dennis and Minerva believe they gave up their own performing careers to support Maggie in hers, while Salina, also an aspiring stage performer and Maggie's understudy for Glamour, believes she would have long become a star if it wasn't for Maggie trying to suppress her. Bert, a strongman who just spends his days working out, makes no effort to get a job. Maggie does whatever required to make this and any show she's in a success, largely in what she feels is her obligation to support her family. Despite long being told by her faithful personal secretary Harrison, Maggie finally truly understands through a newspaper story that despite a $10,000 a week contract for Glamour, she is penniless, but she refuses to understand it's all because of her family living the high life off her back. As such, she believes she has to work even harder to support them, from learning new songs and lines overnight on the wants of the writer and director, to keeping her throngs of adoring fans happy by always signing autographs. She meets one of those fans, Dan Webster, when he tries to help her through a crush of fans, his move which she takes as being that of a masher, which leads to him taking a trip to the police station under arrest. Nonetheless, Dan still loves Maggie, who he considers an angel. Through similar subsequent incidents, Dan is eventually able to ingratiate himself legally into Maggie's life. Dan, from a wealthy background, now owns a cargo ship and sails the world on a whim all in an effort to find the joy in life, such joy which he feels Maggie doesn't have. As they spend more and more time together, Dan tries to show Maggie how truly to have fun. Even if Maggie does find that joy of living through Dan, nothing will truly change in her life until she sees her family for the true lazy sponges that they actually are, and which Harrison has tried to convince her of for most of her career.