The best Charley Grapewin’s drama movies

Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncle’s farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully.

The story follows General George Armstrong Custer's adventures from his West Point days to his death. He defies orders during the Civil War, trains the 7th Cavalry, appeases Chief Crazy Horse and later engages in bloody battle with the Sioux nation.

Judge Priest, a proud Confederate veteran, restores the justice in a small town in the Post-Bellum Kentucky using his common sense and his great sense of humanity.

Harvey, the arrogant and spoiled son of an indulgent absentee-father, falls overboard from a transatlantic steamship and is rescued by a fishing vessel on the Grand Banks. Harvey fails to persuade them to take him ashore, nor convince the crew of his wealth. The captain offers him a low-paid job, until they return to port, as part of the crew that turns him into a mature, considerate young man.

Shiftless Jeeter Lester and his family of sharecroppers live in rural Georgia where their ancestors were once wealthy planters. Their slapstick existence is threatened by a bank's plans to take over the land for more profitable farming.

China, during the rule of the Qing Dynasty. The arranged marriage between Wang Lung, a humble farmer, and O-Lan, a domestic slave, will endure the many hardships of life over the years; but the temptations of a fragile prosperity will endanger their love and the survival of their entire family.

In the lower-middle-class Adams family, father and son are happy to work in a drugstore, but mother and daughter Alice try every possible social-climbing stratagem despite snubs and embarrassment. When Alice finally meets her dream man Arthur, mother nags father into a risky business venture and plans to impress Alice's beau with an "upscale" family dinner. Will the excruciating results drive Arthur away?

A US Navy submarine, the USS Corsair, is operating in the North Atlantic, hunting German merchant raiders that are preying on Allied shipping. Its new executive officer, Lt. Ward Stewart (Power), has been transferred back into submarines after commanding his own PT boat. At the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, he asks his new captain, Lt. Cmdr. Dewey Connors (Andrews), for a weekend leave to settle his affairs before taking up his new assignment. On a train bound for Washington D.C., Stewart accidentally encounters New London school teacher Jean Hewlett (Baxter) and her students. Despite her initial resistance to his efforts, he charms her and they fall in love.

Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.

A young woman is on trial for murder. In flashback, we learn of her struggles to overcome poverty as a teenager -- a mistaken arrest and prison term for shoplifting and lack of employment lead to involvement with gangsters. In a brothel, she meets a young lawyer, scion of a wealthy and prestigious family, who falls for her and helps her turn around her life. But her past catches up with her, and she must face the music rather than cause him scandal.

Socially-conscious banker Thomas Dickson faces a crisis when his protégé is wrongly accused of robbing the bank, gossip of the robbery starts a bank run, and evidence suggests Dickson's wife had an affair... all in the same day.

At the height of the Great Depression, Tommy's mother has been out of work for months when Eddie's father loses his job. Eager not to burden their parents, the two high school Sophomores decide to hop the freight trains and look for work.

A love story centered on the lives of three young German soldiers in the years following World War I. Their close friendship is strengthened by their shared love for the same woman who is dying of tuberculosis.

Anna and Joe are newly married, playful and deeply in love. Joe is scraping by as cab driver in New York City during a period of corruption, mob control and violence between cab companies.

Tom Holmes is someone guided by honesty and moral rectitude, a heroic veteran of the World War I marked by the unbearable suffering caused by his battle wounds, a traumatized but courageous man who will experience, in the years to come, the pain of misfortune but also the happiness of success and hope and love for other human beings.

This is a story about family relationships, set in the time before and during the American Civil War. Ethan Wilkins is a poor and honest man who ministers to the human soul, while his son Jason yearns to be a doctor, helping people in the earthly realm. It is a rich story about striving for excellence, the tension of father-son rebellion, and the love of a mother that can never die.

During World War II, all the studios put out "all-star" vehicles which featured virtually every star on the lot--often playing themselves--in musical numbers and comedy skits, and were meant as morale-boosters to both the troops overseas and the civilians at home. This was Universal Pictures' effort. It features everyone from Donald O'Connor to the Andrews Sisters to Orson Welles to W.C. Fields to George Raft to Marlene Dietrich, and dozens of other Universal players.

Anne Shirley, an orphan, is fostered by farmer Matthew Cuthbert and his sister Marilla, who were expecting a boy to be sent them to help with their farm work. They accept Anne, who quickly endears herself to them and to the local villagers.

An on-the-lam New York card shark marries a small-town librarian who thinks he's a businessman.