The story takes place during the hours just before Gant's demise. The remarkable man and his family are the long suffering wife who finds joy in hearing a compliment about her cooking; Gant's daughter who wants freedom from her father's overwhelming personality and young Eugene Gant who seeks the true meaning of the father-son relationship. The old man, laughing in the face of death, towers about all in what has been acclaimed as a great modern American novel. Stars Thomas Mitchell.