The Young in Heart (1938) is something that we don't see that often anymore, an old black and white ("classic") comedy that we hadn't seen yet. When we do find something like that, it's usually a <70-minute B movie. But this looks like it had some David O. Selznick prestige.
It starts in Monaco, with Roland Young winning some money at cards off a suspicious American senator. The camera pans around to show Young's son, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. romancing the senator's unattractive and shallow daughter, while Janet Gaynor is being wooed by a handsome but not very rich Scotsman. (Amazingly, this "Scot" is played by Richard Carlson, "Tom Stewart killed me" from MST3K's Tormented. And he's great - amazing what an accent can do.)
Young is Col. "Sahib" Carleton, along with his wife, Marmie (Billy Burke). But, as the police who pick them up note, he has never been to India, is not named Carleton, and is in fact, a confidence man, and his son and daughter are trying to nab rich spouses. And so they are given tickets on the next train to London and kicked out.
They aren't even very good con artists - Sahib is always overplaying his hand and Marmie can never remember their cover story.
On the train, Gaynor runs into Carlson, who knows she's a crook, but will give her one last chance, then never see him again. An old lady. Miss Fortune (Minnie Dupree,) overhears the argument and invites her into her private compartment. Gaynor manages to get her to invite the whole family in, and even picks up the tab when Young orders dinner and champagne. She is lonely, and recently quite wealthy.
When the train derails on a bridge, they manage to get her out of the compartment and make her comfortable. So she invites them to stay at the mansion. Score! They soon devise a plan to become heirs - they will entertain and endear themselves to her in hopes that she will change her will.
To look respectable, Young and Fairbanks have to find jobs. They look at people laboring at a construction site and wonder, "but what joy do they get out of it?" They run into Carlson again, who doesn't believe they really want to work, and offers Young a job selling cars - the Flying Wombat, a rather futuristic sportscar. Although it almost kills him to show up, he turns out to be a great salesman.
Fairbanks gets a job as a mailboy because he wants to get closer to receptionist Paulette Goddard.
Ready for the twists? Dupree's lawyer finds out the truth, but Dupree just thinks it's sad that they have to live such desperate, lonely lives, and decides to write them into her will. At a celebration, attended by Carlson and Goddard as well as the con artist, Dupree falls very ill - she may not live. The lawyer lets them know - the fortune she inherited is almost gone, and she will probably lose the mansion if she lives. But by now, the gang has gone human. They love the old girl, and don't care about the money at all!
Epilogue: Fully recovered, Dupree is driving her nurse and lawyer in a Flying Wombat, back to the small home she shares with Young and Burke, and their offspring, now married to their respective loves. Happily ever after.
This is not just funny, but charming and heart-warming. The leads are all first rate, even Carlson, in his first and maybe best film. I don't know if it would have worked with a different cast. Minnie Dupree, as a sweet, kind, and wise old woman, who had lost the love of her life early, made a real impression on us. She only made one other film, but it seemed that she married a tycoon before the turn of the century. So that's OK.
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