Best movies like Reaching for the Sun

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Reaching for the Sun Starring Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, Eddie Bracken, Albert Dekker, and more. If you liked Reaching for the Sun then you may also like: 8 Mile, The Uninvited, Nothing But the Truth, Juke Girl, Blue Collar 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.

Comedy of a North Woods clam-digger who journeys to Detroit to earn money for outboard motor by working on auto assembly line.

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Know any good movies to watch like Reaching for the Sun 1941. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

8 Mile

For Jimmy Smith, Jr., life is a daily fight just to keep hope alive. Feeding his dreams in Detroit's vibrant music scene, Jimmy wages an extraordinary personal struggle to find his own voice - and earn a place in a world where rhymes rule, legends are born and every moment… is another chance.

The Uninvited

A brother and sister move into an old seaside house that has been abandoned for many years on the Cornwellian coast only to soon discover that it is haunted by the ghost of the mother of their neighbor's granddaughter, with whom the brother has fallen in love.

Nothing But the Truth

A young man bets $10,000 that for 24 hour he can tell nothing but the truth.

Juke Girl

During the depths of the Great Depression a hitch-hiker Steve Talbot and jukebox-joint hostess Lola Mears stumble into Cat-Tail Florida where farmers and pickers struggle under the buyer who rules by monopoly, dirty contracts and violence. Steve helps organize against the buyer, leading to further escalation ending in a lynch mob.

Blue Collar

Fed up with mistreatment at the hands of both management and union brass, and coupled with financial hardships on each man's end, three auto assembly line workers hatch a plan to rob a safe at union headquarters.

The Charlatan

A woman goes to a sideshow fortune-teller to have her fortune told, and is astonished when the man looks into his crystal ball and goes into great detail about events in her past that few people ever knew about. Shaken, she leaves and later tells her girlfriend about the incident. The girlfriend insists that she invite the fortune-teller to a party they're having at her house. What the woman doesn't realize is that the "fortune-teller" is actually the ex-husband she abandoned years ago, when she took their daughter and ran off with her lover. When the "charlatan" is invited to the party, he sees an opportunity to take his revenge on his faithless ex-wife.

Tiger Town

Alex believed in his baseball hero Billy Young. When Billy's performance struggled, Alex's friends began to doubt Alex; and Billy began to doubt himself. Alex wants to prove to his friends, to Billy, and to himself that believing in someone can make the difference.

Collision Course

A Japanese investigator and a Detroit cop team up to track down a stolen prototype turbocharger.

Ford v Ferrari

American car designer Carroll Shelby and the British-born driver Ken Miles work together to battle corporate interference, the laws of physics, and their own personal demons to build a revolutionary race car for Ford Motor Company and take on the dominating race cars of Enzo Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1966.

Speed

Terry is the chief car tester for Emery Motors and Frank is an Engineer. Jane has just been hired to work in publicity. Frank and Terry both want Jane to be their girl. Terry has designed a new carburetor that should bring him fame and money, but he cannot get it to work correctly. Terry and Gadget have tested it for over a year, but it still is not perfected. Emery Motors assigns Frank to help Terry with the carburetor, but Terry is not happy because Frank is an Engineer and is also vying for Jane. They finish the carburetor, and to test it, they enter a car in the Indianapolis 500 race. Terry is not yet satisfied with the carburetor before the big race even though it has passed all the tests.

One Girl's Confession

Cleo Moore stars as Mary Adams, whose first step on the road to ruin is a $25,000 robbery. Mary hides the money, then confesses to the crime, secure in the belief that she can dig up the loot upon her release from prison.

Hoffa

A portrait of union leader James R. Hoffa, as seen through the eyes of his friend, Bobby Ciaro. The film follows Hoffa through his countless battles with the RTA and President Roosevelt.

Flash of Genius

In this David vs. Goliath drama based on a true story, college professor Robert Kearns goes up against the giants of the auto industry when they fail to give him credit for inventing intermittent windshield wipers. Kearns doggedly pursues recognition for his invention, as well as the much-deserved financial rewards for the sake of his wife and six kids.

Girls' School

A young woman hides out at a school after inheriting $30,000 from her father.

Detropia

Detroit’s story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century – the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now… the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos.

Fancy Baggage

In order to get back some very important papers from her father's business rival, a young woman pretends to be the rival's new secretary. Complications ensue.

Saboteur

Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane flees across the United States after he is wrongly accused of starting the fire that killed his best friend.

Little Man, What Now?

A young couple struggling against poverty must keep their marriage a secret in order for the husband to keep his job, as his boss doesn't like to hire married men.

Possessed

Marion is a factory worker who hopes to trade the assembly line, for a beautiful penthouse apartment. Mark Whitney, a wealthy and influential lawyer can make her dreams come true, but there is only one problem, he will give her everything but a marriage proposal. Will this affair ever lead to marriage?

The Talk of the Town

When the Holmes Woolen Mill burns down, political activist Leopold Dilg is jailed for arson and accidental murder. Escaping, Leopold hides out in the home of his childhood sweetheart Nora Shelley... which she has just rented to unsuspecting law professor Michael Lightcap.

Thumbs Up

In this wartime musical, a feisty singer working in a London dive swears that she will become a star. She gets a job in an airplane plant when she learns that her fiance, a producer, and his partner are looking for new talent at the war factories. While working there, the woman meets a handsome RAF officer and falls in love. This causes some trouble.

Inside Detroit

Gus Linden, former racketeer head of a Detroit local of the United Automobile Workers of America, A.F.L, attempts to destroy his successor, Blair Vicker, so he can put his old rackets back into the auto factories. Vickers fights him off, ultimately winning help from Linden's attractive daughter Barbara and from Joni Calvin, Vickers' moll.

Street Fighting Men

In a rapidly changing America where mass inequality and dwindling opportunity have devastated the black working class, three Detroit men must fight to build something lasting for themselves and future generations.

Paris in Spring

Afraid of marriage, Simone (Mary Ellis) breaks off her long term engagement with her fiancé Paul de Lille (Tullio Carminati). Paul heads to the top of The Eiffel Tower with thoughts of suicide. In another part of Paris and also afraid of marriage, Mignon (Ida Lupino) breaks it off from her young lover (James Blakely). Despairing, Mignon also climbs to the top of the The Eiffel Tower intending to leap to her death. There she meets Paul and the two compare stories. After discussion, Paul dissuades her from leaping and the two conspire to make their respective partners jealous by pretending to have an affair with each other.

Indianapolis Speedway

A champion auto racer who unhappily learns his kid brother wants to enter the same profession rather than finish school.

Deadline for Murder

A favor for an old friend leads a Los Angeles gambler (Kent Taylor) into a dangerous search for a missing document.

Hardboiled Rose

A Southern Belle must work in a gambling house to pay off her father's debts, which drove him to suicide. She then meets a man who sweeps her off her feet and takes her away from it all.

Spangles

At a three-ring circus, 'Spangles' Delancy, a beautiful bareback horse rider, falls in love with a wanted man, Dick Radley, who uses the circus as a hideout. The show's owner Big Bill Bowman also falls in love with Spangles-- But only one man can have her.

Dirt

In search of a lifeline for his struggling off road racing team, a man takes on a young car thief looking for a second chance, but as their worlds collide, they must struggle to forge a successful alliance.

Massacre

Upon the death of his father, who was the tribal chieftain, Joe Thunder Horse returns to the reservation of his youth, only to discover that his people are dying of various diseases and are being systematically cheated of their possessions and basic rights by crooked Indian agents. He heads to Washington in hopes of righting these wrongs, only to experience prejudice and hatred all along the way.

Swing Shift Maisie

Street-smart Maisie from Brooklyn lands a job at an airplane assembly plant during WWII and falls in love with handsome pilot "Breezy" McLaughlin. Breezy, however, falling in love with and getting engaged to Maisie's conniving roommate Iris, doesn't realize she's using him and it's up to Maisie to convince him.

Hers to Hold

Deanna Durbin is all grown up in Hers to Hold, the unofficial sequel to her "Three Smart Girls" films of the 1930s. Durbin plays Penelope Craig, the starry-eyed daughter of wealthy Judson and Dorothy Craig (Charles Winninger, Nella Walker). Developing a crush on much-older playboy Bill Morley (Joseph Cotton), Penelope stops at nothing to land the elusive Morley as her husband. Highlights include Durbin's renditions of "Begin the Beguine" and the "Seguidilla" from Carmen, and a captivating sequence that includes highlights from Durbin's earlier films, presented as home movies!

Women in Bondage

Women in Bondage is a 1943 World War II film about conditions for women under Hitler's regime. The plot involves two women imprisoned for speaking out against the government. It was directed by Steve Sekely and starred Gail Patrick and Nancy Kelly.

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