'You Can T Take It With You'

The 1936 comedy You Can’t Take It with You depicts the story of a man, Toby Kirby, from a wealthy and powerful family who becomes engaged to a woman, Alice Vanderhof, from a good-natured but undoubtedly odd family. There is an unavoidable conflict of different classes and lifestyles between the Kirbys and the Vanderhofs. In You Can’t Take It with You, the writers Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman want people open their eyes to realize living the joyful life is more important than successes, ambitions, financial profits or positions. The comedy is about an escape route during the Great Depression.
You Can’t Take It with You begins with Penelope Vanderhof Sycamore, daughter of Grandpa Vanderhof and Paul Sycamore’s wife, using a typewriter to write

a play in the living room of a house close to Columbia University. Penelope is working on her eleventh play in nearly eight years. In this family, a typewriter’s delivery is plenty to start a literary job. Essie Carmichael, wife of xylophone player, Ed Carmichael, comes in from making candy in the kitchen, and her unceasing action starts. While Essie tries to practice dancing, her daughter, Penny, attempts to escape her heroine from the monastery where she has spent the last six years. Sometimes, she wonders out loud if she could come back to sculpture. Mr. Sycamore and Mr. De Pinna, Paul’s assitant, appear to be making fireworks in the basement of a house; they sketch out an impressive show with balloons. Ed Carmichael begins playing the xylophone. When Donald, who performs weird works for the Sycamores, comes by to visit the maid Rheba, his date, he carries flies that will become food for Grandpa’s snakes. Ed intends to make some words from Trotsky to wrap it on Essie's next set of candy.
Grandpa Vanderhof, who is seventy five years old and still energetic, has just graduated from Columbia University. When Paul and Penny's other daughter, Alice Vanderhof, comes home, she is very different from the other family members. While Alice introduces her boyfriend, a young man who she works with, Tony Kirby, the son of an administrative company; a government man, whose name is Wilbur C. Henderson, makes a request for Grandpa to pay back income taxes. Grandpa has not paid taxes yet, he has been doing whatever makes him happy since he's given up his work for thirty-five years. Grandpa interred a nameless milkman who died eight years ago as a Vanderhof member. It was before the time of the play. When mail arrives for Grandpa Vanderhof, not a single person thought to bring it to him. Having received none of the letters from the United States government, he does not recognize that he has been owing twenty-four years' worth of income tax and the government inquires him pay back taxes. Tony comes to Alice’s house to meet the family. Kolenkhov, Essie's Russian ballet trainer, and Essie start a dance lesson. During a slight silence, a set of fireworks booms out from the basement. The silliness keeps happening in the second scene. Alice attempts to explain to Tony that her family is abnormal; many members in the household are proofs for that fact. Nonetheless, Tony still wants to marry Alice.
In Act two, about a week later, Penelope tries to practice one of her plays with an ostensible actress, Gay Wellington, who she met on a bus and passed out drunk on the sofa of the house of the Vanderhof.

Mr.De Pinna dresses like a Roman discus thrower and positions himself for Penelope to paint his portrait. Kolenkov wears his undershirt and teaches Essie about ballerina, while Ed Carmichael plays the xylophone for her. In the climax of the mess, Tony and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, come in, in elegant clothing. Tony remembered incorrectly the day that they were supposed to come to the Vanderhofs' house for dinner. The Kirbys were surely supposed to come by in the following day. Seeing the madness of Alice’s family makes the Kirbys shocked. Alice is astonished. Frantically, the Vanderhof family attempts to calm the Kirbys down. All efforts to small talk failed over and over again by the ideological differences between the two families. Mrs. Kirby is disappointed by Grandpa’s snakes, Mrs. Wellington gets up, goes out of the room and sings as she is drunk. Some eggs which were prepared for dinner, are dropped down the sink by Rhebe. The play reaches a climax when Kolenkov shows off his wrestling move by knocking Mr. Kirby out to the ground. Penelope tries to appeases the atmosphere by starting a game which is called Forget-Me-Not. Unluckily, the game starts to uncover some embarrassing truths about the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Kirby; the couple evidently loses their

calm and decides to leave the house. After what occurred in the evening, Alice takes those things as evidence that proves that her marriage to Tony would go the dead end and she tries to abrogates her engagement. Immediately after the Kirbys leave the house, the play reaches the falling action when the Department of Justice's officers come to the house and arrest all the Vanderhof members who they suspected are involved in the rebellion, which is printed and sticked on boxes of Essie’s candy by Ed's innocence. The act closes in smoke and bangs of fireworks by Paul and Mr. De Pinna that are set off by Mr. De Pinna’s pipe without intention.
In act three, probably the day after, Alice is embarrassed and insists that her relationship with Tony is not possible; she comes up with plans to leave the house alone immediately as a way to extricate.

Penelope and Paul are broken when they know about their daughter’s leaving plan; they start to have suspicion about their vain life choices. Meantime, Tony desperately attempts to convince Alice to stay and marry him, but Alice rejects to meet him again. Forcedly, despite what happened in the previous night, the Vanderhof family’s weird actions keep reoccurring. Kolenkhov comes and asks the former Grand Duchess, Olga Katrina, who is from Russia and works at Child’s Restaurant at Times Square as a waitress for dinner. Greeted enthusiastically by the Vanderhoff, Katrina instantly gets into the kitchen to prepare her famous and delicious blintzes. Mr. Kirby suddenly shows up at the door and exerts to get Tony to go home with him. After the circumstance seems most serious, Tony and Alice start to lose hope on love and they see their love as an impossible hopeless dream. Grandpa Vanderhof begins with his philosophy of putting the happiness over money, ambitions, financial profits and successes. Grandpa persuades Tony, Mr. Kirby, and Alice not to abandon their dreams and not to lose hope on love. Mr. Kirby takes Grandpa's advice and agrees to stay for dinner. More importantly, Alice accepts to get married to Tony. At the final of the play, Grandpa reveals how he has been capable

of dodging paying back his income taxes, by convincing the government that he is dead.
The 1936 play about the story of the Vanderhof family and Tony and Alice’s love proves that happiness and love are more important than anything in the world. The play is an escape way in the middle of the Great Depression. The writers Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman of the comedy You Can’t Take It with You want people put their dreams, hopes and loves above ambitions, money, financial profits, positions and successes. More importantly, the writers want people live every moment in their lives joyfully.