The movie Made For Each Other is one I already own as part of a James Stewart collection. From 1939, it also has Carole Lombard in it, who plays Jane, the love interest for Stewart's character John Mason. John is a lawyer in a firm where he is expected to marry the daughter of his boss and become a partner. This plan is derailed when he meets Jane while on a business trip; the two are immediately smitten with each other and impulsively get married. But their married life is not all romance and roses; their honeymoon has to be cancelled due to a court case which, though John wins it, does not get him the partnership. That goes to another lawyer in the firm who's now marrying the daughter of their employer. Then, John's bitter mother who doesn't approve of Jane and is always trying to portray her in a bad light, moves into their little apartment with them. The Depression is on and, instead of getting a promotion and a raise, John is forced to take a pay cut to keep his job. Their first child, a baby boy, is born at this time and, though they love him- and each other- the extra costs and unpaid bills piling up just add to the tensions in their home. Made all the worse by John's poisonous mother who constantly works to cause trouble between them. Things come to a head on New Years' Eve when a the couple, once so full of life and love, contemplate ending their marriage. But then a serious crisis involving the baby makes them reevaluate their lives and what really matters.
The third film in the disc is Suddenly, a 1954 movie starring Frank Sinatra as a baddie, unlike in his previous films. In it, his character, John Baron, and two henchmen take a family hostage because their house has a perfect view of the train station where the President is going to be stopping, and they're planning to assassinate him. Baron sets up a sniper rifle in the window while the hostages try to figure out a way to alert the authorities to what's going on without getting themselves killed by the violent criminals. I haven't actually seen this movie- yet- but it sounds good. I did read though that, after JFK's assassination, Sinatra tried to have Suddenly pulled from circulation because there was a rumor that Lee Harvey Oswald had watched it before shooting Kennedy. This seems remarkably silly to me. I mean, David Berkowitz- the Son of Sam killer- claimed that his neighbour's Labrador Retriever was possessed by a demon and was ordering him to kill people but that would be no justification for doing away with black labs, now would it. In any case, the movie wasn't pulled and I intend to watch it when I have some free time.