Best movies like Life Begins at Forty
The sage rides to the rescue of youth and romance...a rollicking comedy of home folks.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Life Begins at Forty Starring Will Rogers, Richard Cromwell, George Barbier, Rochelle Hudson, and more. If you liked Life Begins at Forty then you may also like: Dog Days of the West, On Moonlight Bay, The Richest Man in Town, Barnacle Bill, Gangster Story and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A small-town newspaper publisher finds himself in opposition to the local banker on the return to town of a lad jailed possibly wrongly for a theft from the bank.
Life Begins at Forty
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On Moonlight Bay
The Winfield family moves into a new house in a small town in Indiana. Tomboy Marjorie Winfield begins a romance with William Sherman who lives across the street. Marjorie has to learn how to dance and act like a proper young lady. Unfortunately William Sherman has unconventional ideas for the time. His ideas include not believing in marriage or money, which causes friction with Marjorie's father, who is the local bank vice president
The Richest Man in Town
The conflicting views of two leading citizens in a small town are reconciled when they come across a promoter who is planning to defraud the town. He is reformed by the daughter of one.
Barnacle Bill
A seasick sea captain commands an amusement pier despite local opposition. Released in the U.S. as 'All at Sea'
Gangster Story
Gangster and cop killer Jack Martin is on the run from the law, and hides out in a small town. Low on funds, he engineers a clever bank robbery that yields him a big bundle. Now he has not only the cops and the FBI after him, but also the local crime boss, who's outraged that an outsider can pull off a heist like that in his territory and not cut him in on it.
The Desperados Are in Town
In this western, a young man tries to walk the straight and narrow, but he is impeded by his past. The trouble begins when the young fellow flees his family's Texas dirt farm and becomes an outlaw. He is advised by one of the desperadoes to return home. The boy does, and with hard work, makes the farm successful. Harvest time rolls around. He is just about to celebrate when the outlaws ride up and force him to help them pull a local bank job. He refuses and kills the gang leader and his brother. Meanwhile, the boy's past is revealed to the town banker. Seeing that he truly has gone straight, the banker forgives him. The boy marries and lives with his lovely bride upon his land.
Happy, Texas
Two escaped convicts roll into the village of Happy, Texas, where they're mistaken for a gay couple who work as beauty pageant consultants. They go along with it to duck the police, but the local sheriff has a secret of his own.
Hot Saturday
A pretty but virtuous small-town bank clerk is the victim of a vicious rumor from an unsuccessful suitor that she spent the night with a notorious womanizer.
Penrod and Sam
A boy (Billy Mauch) and his gang catch bank robbers using their clubhouse as a hide-out.
Power of the Press
During WWII, the publisher of the isolationist New York Gazette is murdered just as he was about to change the paper's policy and support the US war effort. His friend, a small town patriotic editor, is brought in to find the culprits.
Return to Peyton Place
Residents of the small town of Peyton Place aren't pleased when they realize they're the characters in local writer Allison MacKenzie's controversial first novel. A sequel to the hit 1957 film.
Guest Wife
Christopher Price, a small-town bank executive, continues to be loyal to and idolize his boyhood friend, Joseph Jefferson Parker, a famous war correspondent. But Chris's wife, Mary, is none to fond of Joe and tired of her husband's idolizing. On the eve of the Price's second-honeymoon trip to New York City, Joe arrives and tells Chris that he needs someone to pose as his wife in order to fool his boss in NYC, who thinks Joe got married to an overseas woman while on an assignment. Chris pushes Mary into posing as Joe's wife. In New York, this leads to many complications and misunderstandings, with Mary finally deciding to teach Chris and Joe a lesson by making them believe she is in love with Joe.
The County Chairman
Based on George Ade's play which, in part, was based on an incident in a 1902 election in Wyoming, with women's-right-to-vote playing a large role. Here, Jim Hackler, local party-boss in a Wyoming county, has to decide to do what's right and lose the election, or what's wrong and win it.
Miles from Home
Two brothers who are forced off their farm in the debt stricken mid-west become folk heroes when they begin robbing the banks that have been foreclosing on farmers.
The Famous Ferguson Case
A foreword warns against the peril of yellow journalism, and the story illustrates it by following events in the upstate New York town of Cornwall after prominant financier George Ferguson is killed. Two types of New York City journalists descend on Cornwall, one interested in facts, the other in getting sensational "news". Mrs. Ferguson is known to have been friendly with a local banker. The Fergusons quarrel the evening he is killed (by "burglars", his wife tells the police later), and she is arrested, spurred on by the "bad" journalists, who also manage to badger the banker's wife into the hospital. Meanwhile, young Bruce Foster runs the Cornwall Courier, and shows the big city reporters how to dig out real news while they attempt to subvert justice for their own ends.
The Great Bank Hoax
When the prominent citizens of a small town discover that the officers of the local bank have been embezzling money from it, they decide to rob the bank themselves.
Six of a Kind
The Whinneys share expenses for their trip to Hollywood with George and Gracie and their great Dane. A clerk in Whinney's bank has put fifty thousand dollars in a suitcase, hoping to rob Whinney on the road, but instead Whinney takes another road and is himself arrested in Nevada.
Winning of the West
A singing territorial ranger (Gene Autry) spots his younger brother in an outlaw gang.
The Bride Wore Crutches
A cub reporter goes after his story in a big way when he single-handedly exposes a crime ring.
Laughing at Trouble
A man convicted of murder escapes from jail and hides out in the home of a small town newspaper publisher who has befriended him. She knows who the real killer is.
The Catamount Killing
A banker troubled by both business and personal problems is transferred to a small town. There he meets and seduces an older woman. Together, they decide to pull off a payroll holdup together.
David Harum
Rogers plays a small town banker in the 1890s whose chief rival is the deacon (Middleton) with whom he has traded horse flesh. Taylor is a bank teller who places a winning $4,500 bet on a 10-1 harness racing horse, making him Rogers' bank partner.
She Gets Her Man
Esmeralda is a cook in a diner in a small Arkansas town. When a gang of crooks moves into town and plots a bank robbery, Esmeralda unintentionally wrecks their plans, resulting in fame for Esmeralda as the crime-fighting "Tiger Woman," but also further complications.
Riding on Air
Smugglers are using a device for controlling airplanes in flight, and newspaper reporters from Chicago are vying for the story. Reporter Elmer Lane is out to scoop rival reporter Betty Harrison, and capture her heart in the process.
Janie Gets Married
Newlywed Janie's (Joan Leslie) World War II-veteran husband (Robert Hutton) goes to work at her father's (Edward Arnold) newspaper.
The Closer You Get
Irish lads send an ad to the Miami Herald inviting fit and enticing women, between the ages of 20 and 21, to live in their isolated Donegal village. The whole town knows about the ad, and it sharpens everyone's sense of the opportunities for happiness already at hand. Kate, a publican with a young daughter, is separating from her husband and catches the eye of a bachelor sheep farmer. Kieran the butcher realizes that his assistant Siobhan is comely, and then he discovers she's fiery as well. Ollie sends off for Dutch skin magazines that the village postmistress won't release to him. The men, and women, find counsel in their movie-loving priest. Will anyone answer the ad?
Christmas She Wrote
When Kayleigh, a romance writer, has her column cancelled right before Christmas, she heads home to reconnect with her family. Kayleigh gets an unexpected visit from the man who cancelled her column who fights not only to bring her back to the publisher but also for her heart.
Time After Time
A young journalist returns home to work in the local newspaper. There again see his girlfriend, who is now engaged. For her, this reunion will be a great emotional impact.
The Wishing Well
Widower, Mark Jansen, owns and runs the local newspaper for the Midwest town he grew up in. As he struggles to make ends meet, his daughter takes his happiness into her hands by going down to the famous wishing well their little town is known for, and wishing for just that - his happiness. Shortly after, a glamorous woman appears in town by the name of Cynthia Tamerline. Lead by Mark's daughter, Cynthia makes a trip to the well herself and casts a wish. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds that she has been transported to an alternate universe that ultimately changes her forever.
Red Ensign
David Barr is the manager and chief designer of a British shipyard in decline. The shipyard is in financial trouble but Barr has a design for a new ship that will save them all. Can he get the ship built in spite of the opposition from his own bankers as well as the rival shipbuilders and their infiltrated militants.
Two-Fisted Rangers
Thad Lawson arrives in Oak Valley to avenge the murder of his brother, the local sheriff. He learns that Jack Rand, powerful overlord of the town is to blame. After Rand murders newspaper publisher Jordan Webster, Thad sets out to put him behind bars.
Red Courage
Pinto Peters and his pal Chuckwalla Bill ride into town just as the editor of the local newspaper is being urged to leave by a gang of thugs led by Joe Reedly. The pair give the editor $100 and get a bill of sale for the newspaper, only to find out later that Reedly holds a mortgage of $200 against it. This they pay off and start a campaign to clean up the town. They meet with considerable opposition until they enlist the services of Judge Fay.
Dog Days of the West
In the dusty town of Chaparosa, Texas, one one knows how to tame the land better than Long Bill Longley and his best friend Tom Merwin. But, can our two heroes tame the resident bad guy, Calliope Catesby, before he destroys the town? Meanwhile, In Oakdale, Wanda Gilmore has also become quite a hero. That is, until a sneaky TV reporter tries to paint her as the town tyrant. Will Wishbone and his friends come to Wanda's rescue before it's too late! Or will Wanda watch her reputation ride off into the sunset?