On Their Own
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Otto Brower
Spring Byington
Ken Howell
George Ernest
June Carlson
Florence Roberts
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
While party invitations are being sent out by the Jones family, daughter Lucy prepares for her birthday. Her brother Roger complains that only ugly girls are being invited. Lucy soon warms to Roger, however, when she learns from her youngest brother Bobby that Roger and her older brother Jack plan to buy her a twelve-dollar set of Shakespeare books. Jack has no money, however, so he borrows his six dollars from Granny Jones. Lucy picks out a party dress that Mother Jones finds too revealing, but Granny insists it is all right. This happiness is shattered by news that Father Jones has collapsed at the savings and loan. At the hospital, the family learns that the family business has been embezzled and all the family's holdings must be sold. Realizing their old life in Maryville, Ohio, is gone forever, the family decides to move to Los Angeles, California, to be near their father's sanitarium. Leaving little Bobby with family friends, Mother takes the train with Father while Granny, Jack, Roger and Lucy head to California in a trailer. In California, things only go downhill. Mother is unable to get a job as an apartment manager because of the size of her family, and Jack's prospective newspaper job falls through. The family, desperate for money, decides to sell the car and trailer. At Tom Jones' Used Car lot, Jack and Roger are mistaken for salesmen by Abner K. Peters. They convince Peters to buy the car and trailer, but he informs them he must first sell his apartment complex, Paradise Court. Back at their motel room, Mother comes up with a plan. The Jones family buys the apartment complex from Peters, using the car and trailer as a down payment. But in the bright sunlight of day, the apartment complex's true colors are shown. Most of the tenants are Peters' family members who have been gouging him for years, and after their eviction, the place is nearly empty and in desperate need of repairs. The family proceeds to fix the place up and begins looking for renters. However, their two existing tenants, a scientist and a young girl with a noisy little brother, drive away all prospects. Just as they are about to lose all, Mother comes up with the idea of renting specifically to families. Immediately the complex is filled to capacity, much to the chagrin of neighboring landlord Henry Flint. Flint tells Mother that renting to families ruins real estate values. Mother doesn't care and soon Paradise Court becomes "Paradise Found" for numerous families. Lucy opens a day-care center, which quickly becomes a huge success. Flint, desperate to evict the Jones family and their tenants, files a suit against them, claiming that part of their apartment complex was mistakenly built on his land. In court, Mother acts as her own attorney and tells the judge that Flint is only trying to get rid of the families. Their tenants then arrive, and each testifies in the Jones's defense, saying they could never find decent housing for their families until the Joneses accepted them. The judge, however, is just about to rule against the Joneses when he receives a phone call from his wife telling him that they have been evicted due to their noisy son. Rather than force the Joneses to move their apartments, he orders them to pay Flint forty-five dollars for the property in question. As the families celebrate, the judge ask Mother about any possible vacancies.
Director
Otto Brower
Cast
Spring Byington
Ken Howell
George Ernest
June Carlson
Florence Roberts
Billy Mahan
Marguerite Chapman
John Qualen
Charles Judels
Chick Chandler
Forrester Harvey
Isobel Randolph
Walter Soderling
Inez Palange
William B. Davidson
Charles Lane
Betty Greco
Darwood Kaye
John Spezzano
Alfred Oliveri
Marjorie Whately
Leon Tyler
Irving Bacon
George Irving
Selmar Jackson
Eddie Dunn
Edward Earle
Vivien Oakland
Bess Flowers
Georgia Simmons
Helen Dickson
Abe Dinovitch
Crew
William H. Anderson
Harold Buchman
Val Burton
Val Burton
Richard Day
Nick Demaggio
George Dudley
W. D. Flick
Max Golden
Charles Hall
Jack Jungmeyer Jr.
Samuel Kaylin
Thomas Little
Arthur Miller
Helen A. Myron
Edith Skouras
Sol M. Wurtzel
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The working titles for this film were Modern 39ers and Salute the Thirty Niners. Story materials in the Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Script Collection at the UCLA Theater Arts Library indicate that the inital story outline was written by Mrs. Duncan Permain, though she received no writing credit. The film was copyrighted under the title The Jones Family in On Their Own. This was the seventeenth and final picture in the Jones Family series and the only one in which Marguerite Chapman appeared. The Box Office review stated that Jed Prouty, who played John Jones in the previous films in the series, was missing from this film due to contractual difficulties with the studio. Variety reported that actress Florence Roberts died just one week before the film's release. In the film's end credits, Charles Lane is misidentified as Charles "Lang." According to a Twentieth Century-Fox press release, the exterior bungalow sequences were shot on location in Los Angeles, where an ice cream truck gave away free cones to keep spectators from a nearby high school away. For more information on this series, consult the Series Index and see entry above for Every Saturday Night.
