One Foot in Heaven

What's wrong with the younger generation? Concerned when his son indulges in something forbidden by his faith, Methodist parson William Spence decides to witness the evildoing first hand: he goes to a movie. Fredric March portrays Spence, a man of the cloth who knows that his position means he must nimbly keep one foot in Heaven and the other on Earth. This 1941 Academy Award nominee for Best Picture agreeably maintains that balance as it details events in the itinerant lives of Spence, his family and his sometimes unruly flocks (the tale is based on Hartzell Spence's fond biography of his father). Human and humorous, Heaven is a bracing pastor's-eye-view of the Midwest U.S. of two wars ago (Time).