Vanishing Virginian, The

Women lawyers? Women drivers? Women voters? The Yancey family of Lynchburg, Virginia, grapples with strange new ideas in this endearing film based on Rebecca Yancey Williams' memoir of growing up in the early 1900s. Much more than the suffragette movement upsets the Yanceys' well-ordered lives, from young romance to a sensational murder trial to that amazing contraption the automobile. Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) stars as the Yancey paterfamilias, Lynchburg's principled D.A.; Spring Byington (Little Women) is his gentle wife, much mystified by modern goings-on, and Kathryn Grayson, with her exquisite face and even more exquisite soprano, plays a Yancey daughter in this tender valentine to a bygone era.

• drama